www.terason.com -- Terason, a division of Teratech Corporation, is a diagnostic ultrasound technology company that is setting new standards for imaging performance, ease of use, size, and cost. The company’s breakthrough Teratech™ Architecture and cutting edge system integration technologies help improve patient care by enabling compact equipment to generate highly informative diagnostic images previously possible only using large, expensive machines (www.terason.com/products/index.asp)
A Foundation in Research
Teratech Corporation was established in 1994 as a spin off from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Lincoln Laboratory. Teratech’s CEO, Dr. Alice Chiang (www.terason.com/aboutus/team.asp), founded the company to apply developments in the fields of radar, sonar and telecommunications technologies to the demanding requirements of battlefield ultrasound. Recognizing that decades of breakthrough research for the Department of Defense could be applied to the challenges of mainstream ultrasound imaging, Dr. Chiang formed the Terason division in 1996. With initial financing and key patents protecting the integrated circuit technology she developed at MIT, Dr. Chiang dedicated the Terason division to the development of a microminiaturized ultrasound system. Trained as a physicist, Dr. Chiang had already been recognized for her contributions to radar signal processing at MIT Lincoln Laboratory. “As I learned more about ultrasound I realized that currently used ‘conventional’ ultrasound systems are based on outdated 1970’s technologies. Most efforts to miniaturize ultrasound have consisted of shoehorning the same old thing into smaller boxes, with all the tradeoffs in capability and image quality that implies,” she said. “As an analogy, if the development of portable computers paralleled what’s been happening in ultrasound, we would be lugging around collections of miniature vacuum tubes and stacks of miniaturized punched cards instead of the carrying the sleek LCD screens and integrated-circuit microprocessors we now take for granted.”
A Leading Ultrasound Provider
Having delivered on the promise of high performance micro-miniaturization, Terason has shipped thousands of ultrasound systems both to clinicians and such OEM partners as Siemens, Brainlab and Endocare since 2000 (www.terason.com/partners/index.asp). Terason systems are routinely used in the fields of vascular surgery, interventional radiology, endocrinology and nephrology, and the company is the market leader in the ultrasound-guided venous intervention segment. In addition, leading medical device partners have integrated Terason's unique system-on-a-chip technology into high performance multi-modality diagnostic systems that are used in cardiac catheterization equipment, as well as in surgical planning and tissue biopsy applications.
