A picture’s worth a thousand words, but in the medical and security imaging industries, a picture is worth millions of dollars.

One company happily straddling these two profitable sectors and offering both some of the best imaging technology available is Peabody, Mass.-based Analogic Corp. (Nasdaq:ALOG).

The $930 million market-cap company is a leader in the design, manufacture and sale of high-precision data acquisition, and signal and image-processing-based medical and security systems and subsystems. Think computed tomography (CT) scanners, magnet-resonance imaging (MRI) scanners, digital radiography, ultrasound systems, x-ray detectors and CT-based airport security scanners.

Much of the company’s business is derived from selling its technology through contracts with OEMs, or original equipment manufacturers, such as Siemens AG (NYSE:SI), Phillips and Toshiba on the medical side, and through a security and detection systems unit of L-3 Communications Holdings (NYSE:LLL) on the security end, a seller of end-market machinery to hospitals and airports.

If you were one of those folks who just looks at net income, you would have missed the story that sent Analogic’s stock up almost 10% to its $72.77 June 5 close from its June 4 close, when fiscal 2008 third-quarter results came out.

Even though the bottom line fell slightly in the quarter because of a reduction in interest income, a subsequently higher effective tax rate and a 10% dip in security sales, the company reported 23% year-over-year revenue growth driven by better-than-expected medical product sales and strong sequential growth. Total revenue and net income excluding one-time items were both ahead of analysts’ expectations.

By segment, digital radiography was up 138%, medical imaging products were up 29% and sales of its BK-Medical unit’s ultrasound products rose 17%. The company says it’s expecting a pickup in orders for its high-performance CT scanners among other products that analysts are scrambling to find market values. 

For instance, Stanford Group analyst Josephine Millward noted in a June 6 report that because Analogic recently signed on to produce for three leading digital radiography OEMs, it could be poised to sit on up to 50% of the estimated $125 million . . .

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