Olea Medical SA ("Olea") has announced that the Toshiba Medical Systems Corporation ("Toshiba") and Olea have completed the acquisition of the outstanding shares of Olea, following approval from the French Ministry of Economy.

This acquisition enables Toshiba to accelerate the growth of its MRI business and offer new clinical added value to healthcare providers by leveraging Olea's cutting-edge software technology for advanced post-processing and image analysis as well as its broad relationships with the world's key research institutions and customers.

"This partnership means we will benefit from both Toshiba and Olea's strengths to accelerate innovation and enhance our global presence", said Mr Toshio Takiguchi, president and CEO of Toshiba Medical Systems Corporation. He added, "Through the integration of both R&D teams we believe we could bring the innovative solutions and products to play an important role in the development of MRI systems."

Mr Fayçal Djeridane, president and CEO of Olea Medical said, "This is great news for Olea's customers and our fabulous team, and we are happy and proud to join the Toshiba family. We are convinced this is the right strategy to pursue our commitment to provide a widely accessible, complete package of simple, safe, fast, and accurate tools for full-body image post processing, in order to help doctors improve the diagnosis and follow-up process for patients' benefit worldwide."

Toshiba will also be able to provide the multi-modality solutions by integrating Olea's post-processing software with "Vitrea", a widely known enterprise and scanner-connected workstation by Vital Images, another subsidiary of Toshiba, to improve collaboration among experts, consolidate and standardize workflows and enhance diagnostic confidence.