[May 02, 2014]

SuperSonic Imagine to Demonstrate Non-Invasive Liver Scanning On Aixplorer® Ultrasound System at Digestive Disease Week 2014 Conference in Chicago

SuperSonic Imagine (Euronext: SSI, FR0010526814), a company specialising in ultrasound medical imaging, announced today that it will exhibit its Aixplorer ultrasound system, which measures tissue stiffness non-invasively, at the Digestive Disease Week conference in Chicago May 4-6. Liver scanning will be performed live on models in SuperSonic Imagine's booth #3531. SuperSonic Imagine's technology reduces the need for many liver biopsies and enables regular monitoring of liver therapy and health.

Aixplorer's ShearWave Elastography mode is used worldwide to visualize and quantitatively measure (in kilopascals) tissue liver stiffness across the different stages of fibrosis leading up to cirrhosis. This precise, non-invasive measurement of liver stiffness (kPa) is shifting the diagnostic paradigm with potential to change medical procedures for 1 billion people with hepatitis B virus (HBV) and nearly 150 million with the hepatitis C virus (HCV) - Source (News - Alert) World Health Organization.

Liver stiffness increases with the severity of liver fibrosis as a general rule, making it an important parameter to help physicians determine what treatment is indicated and when. This technique can also play an important role in monitoring therapy. Real-time Quantifiable ShearWave Elastography to measure tissue stiffness is available only on the Aixplorer ultrasound system.

Traditionally considered the standard for assessing liver fibrosis severity, biopsy has serious drawbacks including significant incidence of morbidity, high procedure and hospitalization costs particularly when complications arise, and clinical shortcomings since fibrosis is underestimated in 10-30% of the cases. In addition, liver biopsy is also suboptimal for repeated follow-up exams and often can not be performed as it is invasive. Liver biopsyprocedures are also painful and often traumatic for patients.

With ShearWave Elastography, physicians can determine quantitative liver stiffness values in a non-invasive, easy-to-use exam, which can be safely repeated over time to follow disease progression or regression. This diagnostic information can trigger and inform medical treatment, help to evaluate the progress and effectiveness of drug therapy, and provide regular and previously unavailable imaging monitoring for complications. When invasive procedures are called for, Aixplorer's exceptional image quality has proven highly effective in helping hepatologists and radiologists conduct ultrasound guided liver procedures such as needle placement for biopsy and paracentesis.

"We use ShearWave Elastography in our clinic, on a clinical basis, with around 15 to 20 procedures per week," said Dr. James Trotter, MD of Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas, Texas. "ShearWave Elastography is done identically to ultrasonography so it's a very comfortable and simple exam for the patient and it takes only 30-90 seconds to perform. It gives us a qualitative and quantitative way to determine the degree of chronic liver injury our Hepatitis C patients have. We use it on a routine basis to help us make clinical decisions about how we treat patients and we think that by using this technique, we can cut down the number of biopsies by about half. In conjunction with the new therapies available for our HCV patients and using the SuperSonic Imagine Aixplorer system with ShearWave Elastography to assess liver stiffness, we have reduced our patient biopsies by 90%."

According to SuperSonic Imagine CEO Jacques Souquet Ph.D. "Several clinical studies have concluded that ShearWave Elastography is an accurate, reproducible technique to assess liver disease. The impact of ShearWave™ Elastography in liver imaging, both in clinical and economic terms, cannot be underestimated. This technology will enable a major shift in patient management."

About SuperSonic Imagine

Founded in 2005 and based in Aix-en-Provence (France), SuperSonic Imagine is a company specializing in medical imaging. The company designs, develops and markets a new generation ultrasound system, Aixplorer^®, with an UltraFast^TM platform that can acquire images 200 times faster than conventional ultrasound systems. Aixplorer^® is the only system that can image two types of waves: ultrasound waves ensure excellent image quality and shear waves, which allow physicians to visualize and analyze the stiffness of tissue in a real-time, reliable, reproducible and non-invasive manner. This innovation, ShearWave^TM Elastography, significantly improves the detection and characterization of numerous pathologies in several applications including breast, thyroid, liver and prostate. SuperSonic Imagine has been granted regulatory clearances for the commercialization of Aixplorer^® on the main markets. Over the past years, SuperSonic Imagine enjoyed the backing of several prestigious investors, among which Auriga Partners, Edmond de Rothschild Investment Partners, Bpifrance, Omnes Capital and NBGI.

For more information about SuperSonic Imagine, please go to www.supersonicimagine.com

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