More than two years into a prolonged economic slump that depressed capital equipment sales and weakened stock prices, manufacturers of diagnostic imaging equipment appear to have reason to smile again as hospitals restart the process of acquiring new equipment to replace aging technology.

Radiation oncology is a very attractive market indeed. It's a $3 billion-plus capital equipment market predicted to experience a compound annual growth rate of 10 to 15% in the next several years, with the image-guided segment expected to grow at a 35% rate. Approximately 30% of the market is up for grabs over the next three years, as institutions replace old and obsolete equipment. Can small company TomoTherapy sustain the lead it has gained with a new image-guided system that increases the precision of cancer targeting and spares normal tissues, once entrenched multi-billion dollar radiation oncology companies begin to offer aggressive competition?

Breast cancer is the most common type of female cancer and the number two cancer killer in US women. Treatment options continue to expand and researchers are making steady advancements in cancer detection that they hope will one day enable most breast cancer cases to be diagnosed an an early, very curable stage.

PhorMax Corp. hopes to make filmless medical images affordable and widely accessible with CRView, its low-cost computed radiography system. CRView combines an imaging system and Web-based communications infrastructure to incorporate radiology images with other data in an electronic patient record, and facilitate its distribution within an institution or to interested parties on the outside. CRView will be priced at approximately $50,000, less than half the price of existing systems. And it is compatible with existing X-ray systems, which will allow imaging centers to become filmless without having to replace or reconfigure their existing equipment.