Volcano to Close on Sync-Rx Acquisition Within a Month

Volcano Corporation, a San Diego, Calif.-based precision-guided therapy tools provider, is acquiring Israeli medical imaging company Sync-Rx Ltd. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Volcano hopes to close the deal before Christmas.

“This transaction represents a strategic step in the advancement of our multi-modality platform,” said Scott Huennekens, president and CEO of Volcano Corporation. “Sync-Rx’s technology provides Volcano with a platform on which to build a range of advanced software features that will aid clinical decision-making by providing angiography and intra-body image enhancement, measurements and non-invasive imaging and intravascular co-registration capabilities, and future opportunities in physiology and peripheral and minimally invasive structural heart therapy guidance. We are excited about the Sync-Rx team joining Volcano and establishing a footprint in Israel, given the breadth and depth of medical imaging and software talent there.”

Sync-Rx develops advanced software for transcatheter cardiovascular interventions using automated online image processing; it currently is focusing on coronary catheterizations. The company also is working to develop applications for physiology, peripheral, and minimally invasive structural heart therapy.

Percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI), or an angioplasty, is a procedure by which a catheter is fed into a narrowed artery to widen it, often through a balloon. Sometimes, a stent is placed in the artery to permanently keep it open. Controversy over the unnecessary stenting of PCI patients has prompted Volcano to improve the delivery of minimally invasive therapies using visualization, physiology, and other technologies. Also, as part of the Affordable Care Act (effective October 2012), Medicare is now penalizing hospitals that have above average 30-day readmit rates for PCI. According to Huennekens, Sync-Rx’s technology will streamline efforts to validate treatment and outcome, further helping Volcano to better integrate and present various data in a way that creates more meaningful information.

“We see the technology being incorporated seamlessly into our existing multi-modality system with the ability in the future to co-register IVUS [intravascular ultrasound] images directly on to the angiogram,” Huennekens added. “Future applications for the Sync-Rx technology in other areas include co-registration of non-invasive imaging with real time intra-body physiology measurements and IVUS peripheral, forward looking IVUS, forward looking intra-cardiac (ICE) and OCT [optical coherence tomography] imaging.”