GE Healthcare Launches Invenia™ ABUS 2.0, an Advanced Automated Breast Ultrasound System for Dense Breast Screening

• Specifically designed for ultrasound screening and diagnosis of dense breast tissue, this FDA PMA-cleared ultrasound-assisted screening technology features the new cSound™ holographic domain imaging platform and a 15.3 cm Reverse Curve™ probe design that better conforms to body contours, increasing the detection rate of invasive breast cancer by 55%*

• Based on the Invenia™ ABUS Diagnostic Workstation, this novel model for remote breast ultrasound diagnosis and treatment innovatively separates the ultrasound acquisition end from the diagnostic end, thereby extending the benefits of high-quality medical resources to a broader population.

On October 17, GE Healthcare officially launched in China the Invenia™ ABUS 2.0, an automated breast ultrasound diagnostic system specifically designed for screening and diagnosis of dense breast tissue. Building on its extensive expertise in ultrasound technology, the Invenia™ ABUS 2.0 features the new cSound™ holographic imaging platform and is equipped with a user-friendly Reverse Curve™ transducer. It generates standardized 3D volumetric ultrasound images that can be transmitted remotely, enabling cloud-based telemedicine solutions. This expands access to high-quality medical resources, delivering superior and diverse image quality, enhanced patient comfort, and a smarter, more efficient workflow, thereby serving as a powerful tool to further advance early screening and diagnosis of breast cancer in China.

“The main reason why breast cancer screening is difficult to promote at present is the lack of an effective detection method,” said Zhang Jianxing, chief physician of the Ultrasound Department at Guangdong Provincial Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine, in an interview with the media at the press conference. He stated that ABUS can address a significant issue for Chinese women in China.

Dense breast tissue is one of the major risk factors for breast cancer, with 70% of cancers originating in such tissue. Data indicate that due to the high prevalence of dense glandular tissue in over 50% of Chinese women, coupled with a lack of standardized screening criteria and protocols, as well as low public awareness, the early detection rate of breast cancer in China remains below 20%, with only approximately 5% of cases detected early through screening. In recent years, ultrasound technology has advanced significantly, particularly in breast examination. Owing to its high sensitivity in detecting lesions within dense breast tissue, it has become a widely recommended clinical tool and an important modality for the early screening of breast lesions.

Holographic Field High-Definition 3D Volumetric Imaging: Enhancing Early Detection Rates of Lesions

Currently, the primary method for cancer screening in China is handheld ultrasound. However, its implementation often encounters numerous challenges due to the large patient volume, insufficient training and limited experience among primary care physicians, and the heavy workloads of specialists at tertiary hospitals that leave them unable to provide adequate support. Consequently, the quality of screening often fails to meet expectations.

Invenia™ ABUS 2.0 utilizes GE’s proprietary cSound™ Holographic Imaging Platform to rapidly and automatically acquire high-quality images while generating comprehensive three-dimensional whole-breast big data, thereby creating richer imaging information. Unlike traditional ultrasound, which relies heavily on the operator’s technique, Invenia™ ABUS 2.0 separates image acquisition from interpretation and diagnosis. The system automatically optimizes the focal zone and gain, enhancing tissue penetration and uniformity. Operators need only press a button to acquire images across six planes of the entire breast, ensuring standardized and consistent image quality, which significantly improves the precision and efficiency of clinical diagnosis and treatment.

For radiologists interpreting images, the Invenia™ ABUS 2.0 Diagnostic Workstation provides coronal views for evaluating the entire breast, offering a more comprehensive visualization of architectural distortions and multifocal disease. Furthermore, when used as an adjunct to mammography, small breast cancer lesions detected by ABUS are predominantly invasive and node-negative. Extensive clinically validated data demonstrate that imaging with the ABUS 2.0 increases the detection rate of invasive cancers in women by 55% relatively, significantly improving early detection rates and enhancing the likelihood of early cure for breast cancer.

Dr. Song Hongping from the Department of Ultrasound Medicine at Xijing Hospital, Air Force Medical University, believes that the significance of ABUS lies first in its ability not only to improve diagnostic accuracy but also to transform screening workflows through remote image-reading centers; second, it addresses the challenges of ultrasound follow-up, enabling ready retrieval and detailed comparison of images during case follow-up and treatment assessment.

Cloud-Based Ultrasound Expert Diagnosis: Bringing High-Quality Resources to Breast Care

The Automated Breast Ultrasound (ABUS) diagnostic system overcomes the limitations of traditional ultrasound imaging, which lacks standardization and cannot be transmitted remotely. It enables standardized volumetric ultrasound image acquisition and cloud-based transmission, facilitating the dissemination of high-quality medical resources to the field of breast diagnosis and treatment. The Invenia™ ABUS 2.0 allows images to be transmitted directly via the cloud to a diagnostic workstation after front-end clinical scanning, enabling experts to perform remote image interpretation and provide diagnostic and treatment decisions. This establishes a faster and more efficient workflow for image reading and reporting, assisting physicians in rapid diagnosis, analysis, and archiving. Currently, GE Healthcare is leveraging the ABUS remote diagnostic system to establish four national-level image reading centers covering North China, South China, Northwest China, and East China, as well as one regional-level center in Southwest China. This initiative separates breast examination from diagnosis within these regions, allowing a broader population to share access to high-quality expert image interpretation resources at the diagnostic end, thereby improving screening quality.

Concurrently, with the launch of the “Image-Reading Physician Certification Training Program,” GE Healthcare has assembled a team of experienced, certified training experts to help train more breast ultrasound physicians and strengthen the implementation of clinical screening programs.

“The purpose of the training is twofold: first, to ensure standardized image acquisition; second, to achieve standardized clinical data collection. Throughout the entire process, participants will undergo rigorous assessments of compliance with these standards,” stated Director Zhang Jianxing.