By Diagnostics World Staff
March 20, 2025 | GE HealthCare announced a collaboration this week with NVIDIA, expanding the existing 16-year relationship between the two companies to focus on pioneering innovation in autonomous imaging, beginning with autonomous X-ray technologies and autonomous applications within ultrasound.
Autonomous X-ray and ultrasound are promising new areas of development, using AI-enabled software to capture and analyze medical images, which could minimize the burden on technicians and radiologists. GE HealthCare aims to develop AI-enabled X-ray and ultrasound systems by leveraging the new NVIDIA Isaac for Healthcare platform, built on NVIDIA’s three computers utilized to build physical AI, including NVIDIA Omniverse for robotic simulation workflows. Using the NVIDIA Cosmos platform for synthetic data generation, physics-based sensor simulation, imitation, and reinforcement learning, GE HealthCare plans to train, test, and tune autonomous ultrasound and X-ray devices in a virtual environment before deployment in the physical world.
“GE HealthCare has a deep history of firsts in medical imaging, and we continue to build upon our legacy of innovation as a healthcare solutions provider,” said Roland Rott, president and CEO, Imaging at GE HealthCare in a press release. “We are excited about our expanded relationship with NVIDIA and the potential of autonomous X-ray and ultrasound as we are focused on unlocking smarter, more automated solutions that enhance efficiency, standardize imaging, and help ease the burden of increased volumes and double-digit staff shortages on healthcare professionals.”
Transforming X-rays, Ultrasound
NVIDIA and GE HealthCare will initially focus on autonomous development within X-ray systems, specifically the potential utilization of the NVIDIA Isaac for Healthcare and Jetson platforms. GE HealthCare plans to explore Isaac for Healthcare platform and synthetic data generation to simulate various scenarios. This will help to automate repetitive tasks performed by a technologist in the patient exam room. The goal is to enable care teams to focus more of their time on direct patient care and complex cases. The companies will also explore the development of machine-to-patient interactions to autonomously lead the patient through the scan journey.
As ultrasound grows in popularity—and complexity—sonographers and radiology technologists face high patient volumes, long hours, and mental and physical stress. To help address these challenges, GE HealthCare and NVIDIA plan to explore the development of autonomous ultrasound systems to reduce the burden on sonographers and radiologists. For sonographers, autonomous ultrasound systems could streamline workflow and reduce demanding physical strain resulting from repetitive motions. In addition, AI has the potential to take on more of the daily workload though advancements in image understanding and robotic navigation.