News Release For Immediate Release

 

Investor Contact:
Julie Pekarek
Chief Marketing Officer
414.977.4000
ir@merge.com

 

MERGE HEALTHCARE ENHANCES MAMMOGRAPHY REVIEW SOLUTION

Cedara I-ReadMammo™ 6.5 includes support for latest Barco monitor technology

Milwaukee, WI, March 6, 2009 – Merge Healthcare (NASDAQ: MRGE), a leading medical imaging solutions provider, today announced the latest update to its Cedara I-ReadMammo vendor solution for digital breast imaging review. Version 6.5 is built on over 10 years of continuous development, making it one of the longest running, non-proprietary mammography review software in the industry. Since mammography is a high volume area of radiology subject to its own set of regulations, the software for reviewing these images must be highly specialized. Experience in meeting these regulations, while also allowing for efficient review, is critical.

Merge Healthcare’s Cedara I-ReadMammo 6.5 supports 10 bit medical monitors, which display up to 1,024 simultaneous levels of gray versus the 256 offered by 8-bit monitors. Merge partnered with Barco, a global display and visualization company, for quality control in the development. “I’m very pleased to see the full support for 10-bit precision image display added in version 6.5 of Cedara I-ReadMammo,” said Albert Xthona, Product Manager for Digital Mammography at Barco. “This image enhancement contributes to better mammography workflow, because the actual image interpretation goes faster.”

Along with 10-Bit display support, Cedara I-ReadMammo provides further workflow enhancements like lesion contouring and image cross correlation. Features were also added to enhance serviceability, performance and printing. In total, Cedara I-ReadMammo 6.5 gives radiologists enhanced confidence in reading breast studies efficiently.

Cedara I-ReadMammo is available in both stand-alone and plug-in versions, giving healthcare IT vendors the flexibility to incorporate it directly into a PACS viewer or interface it with existing solutions. For more information on Cedara I-ReadMammo™, please contact us at www.merge.com/oem, or visit us at the European Congress of Radiology (ECR) annual meeting March 6-10th.

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Merge Healthcare’s solutions solve mission-critical issues for radiology practices, outpatient imaging centers, hospitals, pharmaceutical companies and device manufacturers worldwide. For additional information, visit www.merge.com/oem.

The matters discussed in this news release may include forward-looking statements, which could involve a number of risks and uncertainties. When used in this press release, the words “will,” “believes,” “intends,” “anticipates,” “expects” and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements. Actual results could differ materially from those expressed in, or implied by, such forward-looking statements. Except as expressly required by the federal securities laws, the Company undertakes no obligation to update such factors or to publicly announce the results of any of the forward-looking statements.

 

Press Contact:
Julie Pekarek, CMO
Merge Healthcare
6737 W. Washington St.
Suite 2250
Milwaukee, WI 53214
414.977.4254
marketing@merge.com