Article Excerpt:
TWST: What is Digirad?Dr. Jack Butler. The original focus of the company was to develop materials for defense and space applications. For the most part, the company was a research and development company, if you will. They experimented with a lot of different solid state technology, gamma ray detectors, etc., but, quite frankly, they really did not come into their own until the mid-to-late 1990s. We have been known as Digirad since 1994. Today, the company really has two primary areas of focus. One is that we build a solid state nuclear camera primarily for use in the cardiovascular arena. We have a suite of cameras out there today: a single head, a dual head and a triple head camera. In fact, we are the only company that I know of today that builds a triple head cardiac camera. The other part of our company and actually the bigger part of our company is that we maintain our own fleet of nuclear imaging cameras. We have 80 now that are scattered in 23 states and the District of Columbia. Essentially what we do is, we go into physicians' offices, primarily cardiologists and primary care practitioners, scan their patients and we provide full services. We provide the camera, the technologists, the radioisotope, the licensure, etc. Those physicians lease that service from us on a daily basis. We have had that running now for about five years. The camera has been around for about six years now. Last year we did $68 million in revenues. We have given guidance on the Street this year ranging between $70 and $74 million.
TWST: What's the difference between a single head and a triple head
camera other than one versus three?
Mr. Casner: It is the ability to acquire higher counts. What we do is,
we inject patients with a radioisotope and the heads really are just a
detection system. So in the case of a single headed camera, there is
just one area of focus and all of our cameras are focused on the heart.
We have a cardio-centric model, and what a dual head and a triple head
do is allow us to capture more counts at a faster rate. So really the
primary difference between a single head and any kind of multi-head
camera is faster acquisition time, shorter time for the patient to be
scanned.
Tickers included in this excerpt: DRAD
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