Royal Philips said Monday it is expanding its portfolio of advanced live-image guidance products for interventional cardiology procedures by signing a resale agreement with Burlington-based medical device maker Infraredx Inc. Coronary artery disease is caused by plaque buildup along the inner walls of the organ's arteries, causing them to narrow and reduce blood flow to the heart muscle. It can be treated with a catheter-based procedure performed in a lab under interventional x-ray guidance. Increasingly, additional catheter-based intravascular imaging technologies, such as Infraredx's TVC Imaging System, are being used to assess the structure and composition of plaques (suspected of being the principal cause of most heart attacks) from within the blood vessel, and to guide the treatment for better procedural outcomes, Philips said. TVC Imaging System composite. Courtesy of Philips. Under the terms of the agreement, Philips will nonexclusively sell Infraredx's TVC Imaging System with its Allura interventional x-ray systems in North America and Europe. TVC is an intravascular imaging system that integrates near-infrared spectroscopy lipid core plaque detection technology and enhanced intravascular ultrasound imaging to visualize the presence of plaques, quantify the degree of vessel stenosis (narrowing) and identify plaques prone to rupturing and causing dangerous blockages. In March, the companies launched software that integrated the TVC with Philips’ Allura Xper and AlluraClarity interventional x-ray systems. "Our goal is to further improve existing image-guided interventions and therapies and to enable new ones," said Ronald Tabaksblat, general manager of interventional x-ray systems at Philips Healthcare. "By teaming up with Infraredx to sell the TVC Imaging System, our product portfolio will be enhanced with an innovative intravascular imaging technology that works seamlessly with our interventional x-ray systems for better-informed treatment decisions and real-time therapy monitoring." "This resale agreement advances our global commercialization strategy by increasing our product's penetration in the cardiac imaging market," said Infraredx President and CEO Don Southard. For more information, visit: www.usa.philips.com or www.infraredx.com