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GE HealthCare, Nvidia Expand AI Partnership for Autonomous Imaging

• By John K. Waters
• 03/19/2025

GE HealthCare is expanding its artificial intelligence (AI) partnership with Nvidia to develop autonomous X-ray and ultrasound systems, aiming to alleviate radiology staff shortages and enhance imaging capabilities.

The Chicago-based medtech company announced the collaboration Tuesday at Nvidia’s GTC 2025 conference in San Jose, California, highlighting how AI could address growing challenges in healthcare. With an aging population and increasing demand for medical imaging, health systems are facing significant staffing shortages. The partnership aims to streamline imaging workflows, improve efficiency, and reduce the burden on medical professionals.

GE HealthCare will leverage Nvidia’s newly introduced Isaac for Healthcare platform, which integrates Nvidia Omniverse for robotic simulation workflows, along with the Nvidia Cosmos platform for synthetic data generation, physics-based sensor simulation, imitation learning, and reinforcement learning. These technologies will allow GE HealthCare to train, test, and refine autonomous imaging devices in a virtual environment before real-world deployment.

"GE HealthCare has a deep history of firsts in medical imaging, and we continue to build upon our legacy of innovation as a healthcare solutions provider," Roland Rott, president and CEO of Imaging at GE HealthCare, said in a statement. "We are excited about our expanded relationship with Nvidia and the potential of autonomous X-ray and ultrasound as we focus on unlocking smarter, more automated solutions."

The initiative’s initial focus is on developing an autonomous X-ray system using Nvidia’s Isaac for Healthcare and Jetson platforms. These AI-driven systems aim to automate repetitive tasks traditionally performed by technologists, enabling healthcare professionals to dedicate more time to direct patient care and complex cases. Future applications may include machine-to-patient interactions, guiding patients autonomously through the imaging process.

For ultrasound, the collaboration will concentrate on reducing the physical strain on sonographers and optimizing workflow efficiency. AI-powered ultrasound systems could assist with image acquisition and robotic navigation, taking on more routine imaging tasks and minimizing fatigue associated with repetitive motions.

GE HealthCare and Nvidia have previously collaborated on AI-driven medical solutions, including the development of the healthcare-specific research foundation model SonoSAMTrack, which was trained on approximately 200,000 image-mask pairs.

"Artificial intelligence and physical AI offer an incredible opportunity to expand global access to GE HealthCare’s advanced imaging systems," said Kimberly Powell, vice president of healthcare at Nvidia. "Working together to train and test autonomous solutions, we will accelerate the future of medical imaging capabilities, starting with the two most widely used modalities: X-ray and ultrasound."

As AI continues to revolutionize the healthcare industry, the expanded partnership between GE HealthCare and Nvidia underscores a growing trend toward automation in medical imaging, with the goal of enhancing both patient care and operational efficiency.