Another year for the Health Connect Partners Radiology and Imaging Conference has come and gone.  To celebrate a successful 2012 event, here are our top 5 favorite moments and a picture slideshow to recap!

Whether we’re talking about what to have for dinner or the tools we use every day to get our jobs done, there is a balance between want and need, cost and budget, value and ROI. For the interventional practitioner, striking this balance in their cath lab equipment choice can be a delicate decision that will affect their facility on a number of levels for years to come. As interventional technology advances, this choice is coming down increasingly to the matter of analog cath lab vs. digital cath lab.

One of Block Imaging’s goals as we blog is to empower our readers with information that will help you solve more and more imaging equipment problems on your own. In keeping with that goal, we give you the following from our in-house Siemens CT scanner specialist.

How to Recover From "Fatal Reconstruction Error"

A common source of a “Fatal Reconstruction Error” on Siemens CT is loss of communication between the main CT control computer (ICS) and the Image Reconstruction System (IRS). The ICS is also called the “Navigator” and, more recently, “Acquisition Workplace”. Loss of communication typically comes from an unexpected power outage or out-of-sequence shutdown of the ICS and IRS. 

Whenever I ask Dave McAndrews, our Senior Vice President of Imaging Solutions, a question he needs to do a little research on, he just tells me the answer is “eleventy”.  Well, we want to answer your questions here about CT scanner prices a bit more clearly (like $50,000-$2,250,000) so we're going to break it down Toy Story style; the good ol', trusty Woody doll of CT scanners (2-16 slice scanners) versus the Buzz Lightyear with all the bells, wings and whistles (64+ slice CT). 

Allow me to share with you a hypothetical conversation that’s similar to the ones we have with CT scanner installation customers:

Just as technology of our modern times makes so many day-to-day tasks easier and more efficient, so do the advantages of phased array MRI coils. Remember when you had to get up to turn off the light? BAM: The Clapper! How much time did you spend rewinding VHS movies? BOOM: DVDs! 

Each day our team engages 100's of people in the field of radiology and imaging from all around the world.  Through the course of these connections we get asked lots of questions.  As you can imagine, each person on our team has a different area of expertise in the world of imaging.  Some know about pricing and availability while others know about areas of compliance and site preparations. The list goes on - the value that GPOs bring, moving permanent magnets, FDA Documentation, political implications and questions about the alphabet soup of radiology. 

Before we get down to the brass tacks of C-Arm site planning, allow me to share a personal example of a failure to plan.

Nobody likes to place calls for medical imaging equipment service. We’d all be much happier if every CT, c-arm, or digital mammo we ever bought worked correctly, 100% of the time, for the rest of our lives. Unfortunately, we live in a world of wear and tear, acts of God, and outright boneheaded moments that create the need for maintenance and repairs. 

My livelihood these days revolves, in part, around selling women's health imaging modalities such as mammography equipment and biopsy tables. These sales, of course, support my personal bottom line, but I continually remind myself that I sell MORE than just products that comprise my paycheck. . . These products save lives.

We often hear questions about MRI rigging costs from our international customers as well as domestic sellers who are responsible for equipment removal costs.  The answer to these questions is, much to their dismay: Every situation is unique.

The X-ray tube is the single most expensive consumable part on a CT. In a way, the tube is the top dog, the big cheese; the king of the CT kingdom. Because of this, it makes sense to gear one’s preventative maintenance toward extending tube life. In the case of Toshiba’s reigning CXB tube series, we’d like to recommend a few things to help your site shout, “Long live the King,” and really deliver on it.

Life Expectancy

Generally your Aquilion tube should easily reach a 500,000 slice count, while counts nearing 1,000,000 slices are not unheard of on the high end. So why would a tube fail much earlier than that? There are a number of reasons, but the most common, especially for systems with replacement tubes, is that the cooling system has been compromised.

Temperature is Key

The Toshiba Aquilion family of CTs uses a Varian tube design that has some exceptional engineering characteristics. In terms of X-ray tube life, the main feature is efficient removal of heat from the tube. In a maintained system, this characteristic gives long tube life. 

Remember the Pocket Fisherman? The Smokeless Ashtray? Or maybe the RonCo Food Dehydrator? Over the years, Ron Popeil has brought us dozens of great inventions, and many of us laughed about the idea of actually purchasing them; until we wanted a fresh bass to accompany our picnic lunch, or our cigar-smoking boss joined us at dinnertime for a tater tot hotdish, or we dishonored the memory of the late family dog by simply burying it instead of dehydrating it into a durable and decorative canine mummy.

Hummel figurines, Big Mouth Billy Bass, used copies of The Best of Air Supply; eBay can be a great place to find just about anything you might want at a very reasonable price. There’s no doubting that the consumer to consumer selling site has changed the way the world shops, but is it really the best place to buy anything? When it comes to used c-arms and other medical imaging equipment, probably not.

In any business one develops a list of FAQs pretty quickly. I’m sure a LOT of people asked Henry Ford, “How fast will this go?” and even MORE people asked the Warner Brothers, “How come Porky Pig wears a shirt, but not pants?” and TRIPLE the amount of people asked Harry Coover (the inventor of Super Glue), “Is this stuff really permanent?” 

If you're anything like me, you woke up this morning with one burning question on your mind: How am I gonna get the most out of my PET scanner or PET/CT?