Your Guide to Medical Imaging Equipment

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.

If you use fluoroscopy equipment like a C-arm, an R/F room, or an analog cath/angio lab you've got an image intensifier (II) that will one day need to be replaced. Most IIs have years of useful life in them, but it is not at all uncommon for a fluoroscopy system to go through at least a few IIs over the course of its life.

Because of the eventual failure of image intensifiers, we polled our service engineering team to find a few ways users can prolong the life of their II as well as some ways they'll be able to tell that an II failure is on the way. Keep reading to learn how you can help keep your II around longer as well as how you can know when to plan for a replacement.

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.

The Philips Allura FD20 and FD10 may be similar in appearance at a glance, but they are very different machines in a number of ways. The main difference between them is the work they are used for. The FD10 is primarily a cardiac system. It does have some options that may allow for light peripheral work, but cardiac studies are what it was designed for. The FD20 was designed, when equipped with the appropriate software, to handle a much broader spectrum of applications, including (but not limited to): angio, cardiac, neuro, and vascular.

To keep you better informed about where each of these systems shines, we've compiled a short list of the most relevant similarities and differences between the FD10 and the FD20 below.