HPE Discover 2026: Powering Siemens Healthineers’ life-saving vision

Photon-counting breakthrough

When asked about Siemens Healthineers’ proudest breakthroughs, Vietinghoff is keen to talk about the Naeotom Alpha CT scanner, recognised as revolutionary for its photon-counting capability, which uses a detector adjacent to its X-ray tube to register individual light particles – or photons – instead of measuring overall light intensity.

“We were the first on the market in 2021,” she says, quick to underline the head start this gave the company over its competitors.

“We introduced a photon-counting class in 2024, because photon-counting is a completely disruptive technology on the detector side. Up to now, there had to be two conversions [turning X-ray photons into visible light and then translating that light into an electrical signal] to be able to get the image data that we need. Now, with the photon-counting, this goes so much faster, and there’s no translation needed,” says Vietinghoff.

“Every X-ray photon that goes through the patient is being collected on the detector, giving us much more crystal-clear image quality, and we can then also use this to reduce the X-ray dose,” she adds.

This advancement allows further observation of, for example, the most minuscule of blood vessels. “When you have a heart attack, those small coronary vessels are blocked, and with this new system … we can now directly look into the vessels and see what kind of plaque it is – if it’s calcified plaque [or] mixed plaque – and then determine what kind of therapy has to be done,” says Vietinghoff.

“After therapy, if the patient has gotten a stent – which is kind of opening up the vessel again – we can also look inside the stent, because the recurrence of calcifications of plaque inside the stent is very high,” she adds.

“It’s very important to monitor those kinds of patients – and with those kinds of vessels, we’re talking 0.2mm, so [these are] really, really tiny vessels we can look into,” says Vietinghoff. “This is something that helps the physician and, in the end, the patient.”

The Naeotom Alpha, proudly displayed on the HPE Discover show floor at this year’s Vegas conference, uses HPE’s ProLiant DL380 servers for post-processing.

“When we have CT or MR machines, we create a lot of data,” explains Vietinghoff, “and this is where we then use the HPE servers to create images out of them, and run our AI [artificial intelligence] algorithms for the clinicians and physicians to be able to read and interpret the images as fast as possible.”

Enterprise platform

HPE also powers Siemens Healthineers’ Syngo Carbon enterprise platform for imaging and reporting in patient care.

“For the whole hospital, where we collect all the data of the patient independently of where it’s coming from – whether it’s a CT image, where we have Dicom [Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine] standards, or if we have Jpegs, movies or digital property images – we can collect them all in Syngo Carbon,” she says.

“We break down the silos in the hospital as well, because sometimes cardiologists are not talking to radiologists,” adds Vietinghoff. “With Syngo Carbon, they have access to all the patient data, wherever it’s coming from. That helps to make a more precise diagnosis and treatment decision.”

Roll out the scanner

Siemens Healthineers’ goal for the next year and beyond is presented in simple terms. “Usage is a big thing. For example, we have now done more than three million scans worldwide with the system we have available. That’s quite an impressive number, in terms of scans and how well-established it already is in the market,” says Vietinghoff.

“When we are talking about competition, currently, we are the only [company] that is FDA [Food and Drug Administration]-cleared – with 510 (k) clearance – for those photon-counting systems,” she says. “Others are working on it, but they are not generally available yet.”

Reducing the burden of reading

As for what can be achieved going forward, Vietinghoff duly points Computer Weekly in the direction of the innovative AI algorithms that might emerge next.

“There are more and more AI algorithms coming, and we also have something that’s called a Digital Marketplace, where a third-party application can apply their AI and post-processing solution,” she says.

“Our AI algorithms can automatically do many things for the physician, to reduce the burden of reading,” says Vietinghoff.

“We all know we don’t have enough physicians anymore. Staff shortages are a global issue. But the systems are creating more and more data and more and more images, so we need to kind of level that out, and this is where we can help with our solutions.”