St Maartenskliniek pushing boundaries of orthopaedics diagnosis with Fonar upright MRI scanner

26 Sept 2006

Melville, New York, USA & Nijmegen, Netherlands. FONAR Corporation (NASDAQ-FONR), has announced that the St. Maartenskliniek, the Netherlands' largest orthopaedic hospital, has placed an order for the FONAR Upright Multi-Position MRI. The system was sold through TECSERENA, FONAR's European Sales organization based in Cologne, Germany.

The St. Maartenskliniek, in Nijmegen, Netherlands has over 300 beds and treats 25,000 patients a year. It also has an extensive outpatient clinic dedicated to treatment and scientific research.

Dr. Paul Pavlov, Director of the St. Maartenskliniek and Chairman of Spine Surgery at the St. Maartenskliniek's internationally acclaimed Spine Centre said, "We at the St. Maartenskliniek, the biggest orthopaedic hospital in the Netherlands, are very much looking forward to this new technology from FONAR which will enable us to evaluate the spine anatomy in the fully weight-bearing state and in multiple positions. We expect these new multi-position capabilities to lead to more accurate diagnoses and better surgery outcomes for patients. Once our active research program has discovered the benefits of this new FONAR technology for patients, we intend to publish the results in a lot of peer reviewed scientific journals."

 "The orthopaedic applications of upright weight-bearing MRI are vast. The importance of weight-bearing and multi-position MRI analysis of patients with spine disorders is extensive," said Dr. Raymond Damadian, president of FONAR.

"The St. Maartenskliniek 'Spine Centre' for spinal surgery is world renowned as a Centre of Excellence for reconstructive spinal surgery. The St. Maartenskliniek will be introducing FONAR's new weight-bearing technology for the benefit of their spine patients, but their intended uses of FONAR's new technology are not limited to the spine. The St. Maartenskliniek's planned uses of FONAR's new technology extend well beyond the spine to all orthopaedic applications where weight-bearing and multi-position are key factors, e.g. knee surgery, hip replacement, reconstructive foot surgery, artificial joints, acute orthopaedic injuries."

"We are particularly looking forward to collaborating with the St. Maartenskliniek's world-renowned scientific research teams in pioneering the multiple applications of FONAR's new technology in the numerous disciplines of orthopaedics where we believe FONAR's newly available weight-bearing MRI technology has a key role to play in the achieving more accurate diagnoses and improved surgical results," said Dr. Damadian. "We are delighted to be partnering with the St. Maartenskliniek as they blaze the multi-position weight-bearing imaging trail on the orthopaedics frontier."

"The FONAR Upright MRI is the ideal scanner for the hospital emergency room where acute injuries and acute illnesses must be diagnosed quickly. The St. Maartenskliniek has earned distinction for their Urgent Orthopaedic Assistance Service where acute musculoskeletal injuries are diagnosed and treated. The development of customized imaging protocols for the rapid diagnosis of the acute patient (orthopaedic as well as non-orthopaedic) that can provide rapid MRI diagnosis and rapid MRI assessment of the adequacy of treatment in the hospital emergency room, promises to provide a major advance in acute medicine that can be life-saving, and minimize the complications that turn into permanent disabilities.

"Rapid emergency room MRI imaging can be expected to advance the art of acute medicine on both of these fronts from the availability of more rapid and more accurate diagnoses and from the more precise (image verified) treatments that result. We expect to be working with the St. Maartenskliniek in the development of new urgent orthopaedic MRI imaging techniques for use in the St. Maartenskliniek's Urgent Orthopedic Assistance Service that can bring the benefits of this new technology to the acutely injured patient," said Dr. Damadian.

"Finally, the St. Maartenskliniek is distinguished for its artificial joints program," said Dr. Damadian. "Here again we expect to work with the St. Maartenskliniek to make weight-bearing multi-position MRI image analysis an integral part of reconstructive artificial joint surgery as well as an integral part of the post-surgical analysis of artificial joint performance. The FONAR Upright Multi-Position MRI is also uniquely suited for the multi-position analysis of the non-weight-bearing joints (e.g. shoulder, wrist, elbow) since these joints are difficult to multi-position in the confined spaces of the cylindrical tubes of conventional MRIs."

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