Your Guide to Medical Imaging Equipment

It’s been several years since Philips declared their Forte nuclear camera end of life (EOL). Still, through the service and spare parts support of third party providers, many users have continued scanning patients with them. Now, however, this years-long arrangement may no longer be a viable one.

On September 19, Philips Sr. Manager of Post Market Surveillance issued an urgent field safety notice to all users of the Forte family to discontinue use until further notice. This applies to all Fortes, including the Powerpack, the Jetstream, or systems refurbished by Philips.

In the notice, Philips said “There is a possibility that a detector may fall unimpeded vertically to the end stops of its travel limit, due to mechanical failure, possibly making contact with a patient that could result in entrapment, serious injury, or death.” Essentially, anyone who keeps using the Forte runs the risk of hurting a patient, or worse, with a falling detector.

This news raises serious questions for facilities that have relied on the Philips Forte for their nuclear medicine studies. What's being done? How long will it take? What are our alternatives? Below, we'll address those questions with the information that's available now. Check back periodically to to see updates as they become available from Philips and the FDA.

Anyone considering the purchase of refurbished imaging equipment has saving money in mind. After all, getting more done with the same (or lower) budget is more important than ever. The secondary equipment market is the perfect place to achieve those goals, but beyond simply paying less, it's important to look for overall value and real cost-effectiveness. To that end, we'd like to share some tools that can help you find the refurbishment provider who will best fit your needs.

The following are seven questions you can ask a refurbishment provider to better understand what you can expect from their quality and the experience of working with them. After you check out the questions, stick around and download them for your reference in our handy PDF checklist resource.

Q: What do GE digital mammography systems, your car, and your own body have in common?

A: When someone tells you there’s a serious problem with one of them, it pays to get a second opinion.

In the case of the GE mammo, we’re referring specifically to a diagnosis of “bad detector”. The detector is one of the most expensive parts to replace on a digital mammography system. With used models falling anywhere in a vast range from $30,000 to $100,000 depending on the model of your system, this kind of diagnosis from a service engineer is almost the worst news a digital mammo owner can hear, second only to having the entire machine carried away by a freak tornado and dropped through the roof of a reclusive conspiracy theorist.

If you’ve recently heard bad detector news or worry that someday you might, we have a few words of comfort for you: It might not be your detector

Because Block Imaging has installed so many refurbished C-arms, we have also been privy to the aches, pains, and woes of buying too much C-arm for the room(s) you had planned on putting it in. To help prevent all of that, we've compiled the ballpark dimensions of a typical full-sized C-arm machine and table, as well as several other considerations to bear in mind as you plan for your new system.

Much of what you’ll read is based on the measurements of an OEC 9800 with a 9” image intensifier. Given how common that model is, the specifications should be a great place to start in figuring the space needed for a number of models.