Your Guide to Medical Imaging Equipment

When looking to purchase a cath lab for your office-based lab (OBL) facility there are a lot of considerations that come into play, but, first and foremost, is the system you choose to install. This can be one of the largest capital purchases for the facility, so it’s important to choose a system that will not only perform the needed studies, but also fit into your budgetary “sweet spot” to provide the best return on investment possible. With that in mind, how do we determine the best cath lab for your OBL?

In the cath lab world there are many peripheral items that can be used during catheterization to adapt a lab to the needs of hundreds of procedures. Today we’re going to focus on just one peripheral type, ultrasound devices; specifically IVUS and ICE. These devices have similar but distinct applications that can sometimes be easy to confuse. We'll clarify what each is and how it's used in conjunction with a cath lab below.

One question we're asked on a regular basis about interventional radiology equipment is, "What's the difference between a cath lab and an electrophysiology (EP) lab?" It’s a great question and, from a cursory look at the cath lab system being used, you wouldn’t notice a difference. Both cardiac catheterization and electrophysiology labs use the same, small-detector radiology system hardware- a GE Innova 2100 IQ or Philips Allura FD10, for instance. Still, there are significant differences between these two lab setups that require more than a brief glance to understand. We'll discuss these below.

EP, (electrophysiology) labs are where the "mad scientists" of the interventional cardiology world typically find themselves. And as with most mad scientists, they have a particular subset of equipment that they use to practice their craft. At the hub of an EP setup is a cath lab, an equipment type with many choices available. Because of this broad variety, this article is here to provide some guidance on choosing the right lab for EP work.

More and more, people looking for cath/angio systems ask us about GE's IGS 5 equipment series. They are the latest generation in GE's cath/angio product line, introduced in 2012, and are only just starting to creep onto the secondary market. In light of this gradual emergence, availability of used IGS 520,530, and 540 labs is still quite limited- but that doesn't mean facilities need to wait several more years to get cath lab technology that delivers high-level performance.

GE's previous generation of cath lab equipment, the Innova series, is widely available and shares so many features and components with the IGS 5 that the quality and user experience of choosing either are highly similar. Below, we'll lay out some of the similarities and differences between GE Innova and GE IGS 5 cath/angio labs.