As first-time attendees, my colleague and I weren’t sure what to expect from the Clinical Engineering Association of Illinois’ (CEAI) annual conference but, after this year’s event, we can say our experience was positive enough to bring us back next year. Over the course of the conference we experienced a few key reasons why CEAI is a great show for imaging dealers to attend and wanted to share them with you.

Attention medical imaging engineers: vendor credentialing programs are here, and they’re not going anywhere!

When people read through our c-arm inventory offerings and see OEC 9800 Super-C they often end up asking, "What's so super about it?"

When selling a piece of imaging equipment like a Hologic bone densitometer, details are everything.

If you’re relatively new to imaging equipment buying there are more than a few things you should know. We’ve learned from personal experience that it’s what we don’t know, fail to ask, or assume about that most often gets us into trouble. There are more examples of this than we could hope to fit into a single blog.

The following is a relatively quick and simple, but very important task for anyone owning or operating a Hologic Discovery Series bone densitometer. This procedure ensures that your Discovery is operating at a level consistent with FDA and manufacturer standards for diagnostic quality and patient safety. This test should be run each day before any patient scans are performed.

If you read the title to this blog and asked yourself, “Why do I care what the serial number on my OEC C-arm is?” I’d like to remind you that proper classification can be very informative. These serial numbers tell us a whole lot more than one might think.

Jason Crawford explains the three types of used x-ray tubes available in today's imaging equipment parts market. What you are really being offered is either:

If you’ve ever wondered what the differences are between an OEC 9800 Cardiac C-Arm and an OEC 9800 Neurovascular (Neuro) C-Arm, prepare yourself to never do that again.

Looking over the wide landscape of secondary market MRIs, a couple of things become very clear:  Open MRI is still widely used and in high demand, and the Hitachi Airis II is perhaps the most popular open MRI of them all. With .3 Tesla strength, a permanent magnet, and low annual maintenance costs, it’s a reliable system that meets a variety of imaging needs.  

Before we talk about the differences between the GE Innova Cath Lab and the GE Innova IQ, I beg your indulgence for a brief analogy that I think will help you understand the relationship between these two systems a little more clearly.

See the video below for an explanation of how to identify the different types of Philips CT scanners. Paul Crawford demonstrates using a Philips MX8000 16 slice CT to determine if you're looking at an MX8000 versus Brilliance by looking at the CT tube.

It's the time of year when many hospitals are either preparing their capital budgets or have just learned the fate of their capital budgets. This is an interesting time because it often puts the hospital’s executives at odds with the imaging directors. The directors are attempting to keep the hospital's equipment together (often through the use of duct tape and bailing wire) and the officers are trying to figure out how to pay for capital improvements based on hospital revenue and still eke out a profit (or at least a smaller loss).

There are two crucial points where refurbished imaging equipment options can really assist in this process. The first: relying on refurbished equipment in the development of capital budgets. Refurbished equipment pricing options at the beginning of the process could allow the dollars to go much further while still allowing a substantial upgrade. Second, when the dollars are allotted and there are not quite as many of them as desired, refurbished equipment dealers can assist you in filling the gaps in the capital budget with lower cost options for much-needed equipment.

For imaging centers, both hospital and independently-owned, Medicare’s recent CR 7502 brings unique challenges and opportunities. As with any change in the federal reimbursement structure for diagnostic imaging, this legislation is a reaction to market conditions within the industry. The following is a brief history of conditions that helped bring on CR 7502 and a prediction of what implications it might hold for the future of outpatient imaging centers.

Hello! We’ve not met before, but I have some imaging equipment installation advice for you. Sure, that may seem presumptuous, and you’re probably a perfectly sensible human being who doesn’t even need it, but just in case you could use a reminder, I think you should hear me out.

Check out the video below where Chris Sharrock explains the major differences between OEC C-Arm image intensifier sizes (9 inch vs 12 inch) and why you would want one versus the other. Learn which studies would require you to go with a 12" image intensifier and a few other things to consider when trying to decide which is the best c-arm for your facility.

Earlier this summer, we at Block Imaging released an article discussing ways to minimize the effects of the current helium shortage when it comes to MRI maintenance. Shortly thereafter questions began to arise; questions we would have done well to anticipate. When did the shortage start? Is anyone working on new sources of helium? Where is all the helium going?

When a lot of people shop around for an imaging equipment service contract they focus a great deal of attention on the price; an undue amount of attention, in fact. Don’t get us wrong, pricing is a very important aspect of a service purchase, but there’s much more to consider.

Is your OEC laser aimer broken? Fear not, we've seen it before! What I wouldn’t give for the glory days of the late 20^th century; when the word “laser” conjured images of Han Solo battling storm troopers on distant planets or Superman foiling Lex Luthor's latest scheme. Alas: we live in the 21^st century and, like all the other equipment we use every day, our lasers break down from time to time.