According to IMV Medical Information Division’s recent census of CT sites in the U.S., an estimated 68.7 million CT procedures were performed in 7,640 hospital and non-hospital sites in 2007. This represents an average annual growth rate of ~8% since 2003, when an estimated 50.1 million procedures were performed.

“While the number of CT procedures performed is growing steadily, 2008 CT capital budgets are decreasing, indicating a slowdown of purchase activity for replacement and additional units,” observed Lorna Young, Senior Director, Market Research. “From 2000 to 2008, the proportion of CT sites having zero dollars budgeted for CT increased from 51% to 83%. Given an installed base of over 10,000 CTs and an average replacement cycle of 7 years, the CT replacement market could account for sales of over 1,400 units per year. However, the number of sites budgeting for replacement units is slowing. Over the last five years, CT sales were driven by sites acquiring multi-slice CT scanners, and the proportion of installed multi-slice CTs grew from 27% of the 2002 installed base to 81% of the current CTs installed. It appears that purchase activity has slowed, as CT sites focus on the efficient utilization of their CT equipment.”

IMV’s 2007 CT Market Summary Report describes trends in procedure utilization, the CT installed base and purchase plans, workstations, power injectors, contrast media utilization and budgets, and site operations characteristics. The report also covers adoption trends of new procedures such as CT Angiography and advanced technologies including 64-slice CTs. Highlights include:

• CT Angiography procedures are performed by two-thirds of the CT sites.
• Two thirds of the CT procedures performed in 2007 used contrast media.
• Over half of the CTs installed in 2007 were multi-slice CTs with 64+ slices.
• The large amount of data from volumetric scanning places increased demand on processing the data. Two thirds of the CT sites use workstations for processing and displaying CT images, with 3D software as an essential capability.

The data source for this report is IMV’s 2006/07 CT Census Database, which provides comprehensive profiles of hospital and non-hospital CT sites in the United States. The database can be licensed by qualified subscribers and includes contact and site-specific information. For more information about IMV’s CT Census Database and Market Summary Report, visit the corporate website at www.imvinfo.com or call 847-297-1404 to speak with a representative.

IMV is a market research consulting firm founded in 1977 specializing in medical imaging and other advanced healthcare technology markets. IMV’s proprietary marketing consulting services, in combination with our census databases of U.S. imaging sites with selected modalities, provide clients valuable assistance in strategic planning, customer satisfaction, product development and sales initiatives. Current census databases include interventional angiography, radiographic fluoroscopy, cardiac catheterization, CT, MRI, nuclear medicine, echocardiography, diagnostic ultrasound, PET, radiation oncology, X-ray/DR/CR and RIS/PACS.