Vulnerable Plaque, Chronic Total Occlusions, to be focus of Soundwave Medical Transducer Development

Ashland MA January 9, 2007. Soundwave Medical will develop sensors for the detection of vulnerable plaque and for navigating chronic total occlusions, company sources say. Vulnerable plaque is a serious arterial condition that affects a large portion of the population, and can result in sudden cardiac death. Currently there are no ways to detect vulnerable plaque or ways to treat it effectively without highly invasive surgery. The company plans to improve upon an earlier technology developed by founders Robert J Crowley and Hugh A Tripp when they were at then-startup Boston Scientific. "IVUS" which is a catheter based way to look into arterial blockages, is an accepted medical procedure conducted in many catheterization laboratories around the world. Soundwave Medical plans to improve IVUS to make it easier to use, more informative, safer, and more cost effective and sensitive to actual disease states. The company is developing 3VUS tm which is a third generation of the existing technology, but with substantial improvements in performance, cost and manufacturability.

For further information see http://www.soundwaveresearch.com