GE Healthcare sheds breast-imaging system to SmartBreast

SmartBreast Corporation, a privately held company focused on breast cancer screening and diagnosis, has acquired the Discovery NM750b Molecular Breast Imaging (MBI) assets from GE Healthcare, including the MBI scanner designs, manufacturing tools, instructions, related patents, and the installed-base service business. The Discovery NM750b is installed at scores of sites worldwide. SmartBreast will manufacture, market and distribute the MBI scanner, rebranded as Eve Clear Scan e750.

MBI sees through dense breast tissue and finds cancers that mammography misses. In a published clinical study with one-year follow up of 1585 women with dense breasts, researchers at the Mayo Clinic reported that mammography found 3.2 cancers per 1,000 women with dense breasts. Adding low-dose MBI increased the number of cancers found to 12 per 1,000.