The
Challenge
Throughout
the early 1990’s GE’s central
R&D lab, GE Global Research, began the basic research
for the use of amorphous silicon detectors in digital
medical imaging with funding from a number of government
agencies including DARPA, U.S. Army, U.S. Navy, and Department
of Health and Human Services. By the mid-1990’s,
the low cost manufacturing technology was still in GE’s
lab and the existing cost of manufacturing was so high
that only a limited number of high end applications such
as cardiac imaging, were feasible. If the cost of manufacturing
amorphous silicon could be reduced enough, it would enable
detectors with a wide range of applications, not just
from medical imaging but also in industrial uses such
as non-destructive testing.
While GE scientists conceived of ways to bring the cost
of manufacturing down, according to GE Vice President
Lewis Edelheit:
“Getting
internal support for the low cost manufacturing proposal
was hard. At the time it was difficult for some executives
to see the advantages of taking digital imaging beyond
cardiac applications. Also the combining of process
steps in the fabrication of amorphous silicon integrated
circuits was considered to be a high risk proposition.”
Thus, in 1995, GE, with its manufacturing partner Perkin
Elmer, applied for and received an ATP award due to the
high level of risk, innovation, and potential for national
benefits that the project proposed. According to Edelheit:
"Given
the technical and other risks, had the ATP turned down the
proposal, the promising, low-cost manufacturing process initiative
would have been shelved." |
Technical
and Economic Impacts
In
the ATP-funded project, GE successfully completed most of
the ambitious technical goals. Major accomplishments include:
- Reducing
the total number of process steps from 300 to
200
- Reducing
the total number of mask steps, the critical
manufacturing challenge, from 11 steps to 7
- Reducing
the total cost of the process by 25%
- Filing for and receiving three patents
However, when the ATP project was finished in 2000, there
was still a significant amount of research to do before
the technology could be ready for commercial application.
Although this technology had needed a full decade of
government support from a variety of different agencies,
the ATP project helped the private sector participants
overcome the technical uncertainties and stimulated internal
interest that was not there before. Two years after project
completion, the partners continued investing millions
of dollars into the technology with no additional government
funds.
In
addition, prior to the ATP project, the low cost
manufacturing technology was held by GE’s corporate
lab. Through the ATP project, GE was able to transfer
the technology to Perkin Elmer. Instead of being
the manufacturer, GE made the strategic decision
to be an end user of the technology, and allowed
Perkin Elmer to focus on the manufacturing, where
it could then sell the detectors to a wide variety
of other users.
In January of 2004, nearly ten years after the companies
began working together on the ATP project, Perkin Elmer
signed a $250 million deal to supply GE with amorphous
silicon flat panel detectors, where:
- GE Medical Systems will use these in a variety of
medical cost-sensitive medical applications
- GE Aircraft Engines will use the detectors for non-destructive
testing
The
medical applications are focused on digital
mammography and digital radiography. The major benefits
of these uses include:
- Superior breast cancer detection through lower false
positives and fewer unnecessary biopsies
- Reduced radiation exposure
- Reduced medical costs through enhanced clinical
productivity
The
potential economic impact of the digital mammography
applications alone is
large—a rigorous cost-benefit study
1 estimated
economic impacts between $219 million and $339 million,
and a benefit-to-cost range of 125:1 to 193:1.
The enabling technology that ATP has funded has created
even broader benefits, as Perkin Elmer is pursuing sales
of the amorphous silicon detectors to users who will
apply this toward:
- Industrial non-destructive testing (NDT)
- PCB inspection
- Pipeline inspection
- Bone densitometry and veterinary imaging
- Airport
and customs cargo inspection for homeland security
1 Pelsoci, Thomas, Low-Cost
Manufacturing Process Technology for Amorphous
Silicon Detector Panels: Applications in Digital
Mammography and Radiography, Prospective Economic
Case Study for an ATP-Funded Project, NIST
GCR 03-844, February 2003.
Date created: June
1, 2005
Last updated:
August 21, 2006
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