Volcano Corp.

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This is the second time in the Sacramento area for Dahldorf, who also worked for Baxter starting in 1981. But to move up during his 18 years with Baxter, he had to be willing to move often. He was in Sacramento in the mid-1980s. He most recently worked at Digirad before joining Volcano.

He says he likes being part of a relatively small operation that’s quick on its feet. “You’re your own bureaucracy,” Dahldorf says. “There are long hours, but you see the impact of the decisions you make.”

Dahldorf says he appreciates his boss’s motto of “go, go, go” in such a competitive, constantly changing industry.

BLOOD-FLOW CHALLENGES

Boston Scientific and Japan-based Terumo are Volcano’s primary competitors. The company splits U.S. market share about evenly with Boston Scientific, while its market share in Japan is estimated at 33 percent and in Europe at 28 percent.

To vie for the attention of catheter labs in hospitals around the country, Volcano is developing a computerized built-in console, as well as a mobile model for analyzing catheter-fed images. The targeted market is big: an estimated 3,000 catheter labs in the United States and another 3,000 abroad. The consoles are designed to be “always on and as easy to use as an ATM,” Dahldorf says.

And to better compete against Boston Scientific, Volcano is offering two types of catheters — a rotational and a phased array — to give doctors and patients more choice. Rotational catheters offer clearer images but are more rigid, while phased array are more maneuverable and offer a wider field of vision. Boston Scientific offers just the rotational catheter.

Volcano also is working with Paieon, a medical imaging company with offices in New York and Israel, to develop “co-registration” of ultrasound images and angiograms — the traditional two-dimensional X-ray pictures — on a Volcano console so physicians can use both.

Meanwhile, Volcano is developing markets through its so-called natural history studies, which involve taking cardiovascular images, a “virtual biopsy,” of 700 patients. After time passes, and a few return with heart problems, another image will be taken. Jason Rogers, an interventional cardiologist at UC Davis Medical Center in Sacramento, says products manufactured by Volcano are used regularly in the center’s catheter lab.

Volcano is “poised to be on the cutting edge of all of this technology,” he says. “I think they’re a good bet to do well.”

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