Your Guide to Medical Imaging Equipment

We've all stood in the checkout line at Best Buy before. Maybe you've just bought a new HDTV- you're excited to go home, mount it on the wall, and fire up Star Wars in 4K, when the cashier asks the question, "Do you want to pay an additional $99 to extend the 3-year warranty?"

Thinking back through my history as a TV owner and how many times I've actually needed to have one repaired, I calculate the risk in an instant and politely decline. Then I go about my life, happy with my decision and comfortable with the low-probability risk I've just taken.

This is my approach to warranties with many products, but my perspective has changed over my years of selling digital cath/angio labs. Relative to this equipment, the risk can be very high, and the warranties can bring so much more value to the table. Check out the examples below to see what I mean and learn what you could save with the right service investment,

The Siemens Sensation family has two main detector types: those found on the 10 and 16-slice systems, and those found on the 40 and 64-slice systems. Both use a proprietary, ceramic-based material to fluoresce under exposure to X-ray. They are also both comprised of 42 modules that receive the X-ray and convert it to electronic signals.

Periodically, depending on a few factors like your room temperature and humidity and your patient volume, these detector modules will begin to degrade and fail. The following are a few tips for troubleshooting detector modules and installing your replacements.

A dependable digital mammography unit is the cornerstone of any women's health department. Among the leaders in the digital mammo modality is the Hologic Selenia series.

While the Selenia's performance has earned it this place of favor, it's still subject to some of the same service and maintenance pratfalls of any digital X-ray equipment. One of the most serious among these is the eventuality of digital detector failure.

To help all you Selenia users out there prepare for this a little better, we've compiled information from the experiences of our parts and service teams and the facilities they serve to bring you typical cost, lifespan, and replacement information for your Hologic Selenia digital detector.

If you use an OEC 9800 C-arm, you're probably already familiar with the series of arrows that move across the display panels during the boot up sequence. You probably also know that if boot up is interrupted while those arrows are still on the display, counting the number of arrows the machine has made it to will tell you what type of boot-up problem your system is experiencing. What you might not know, and what we hope to share with you today, is what it means when your 9800 stops five arrows into boot up. 

Moving from OEM service to third-party service or, perhaps, investing in support for your equipment for the first time can be a daunting proposition- AND one that raises many questions. Our team fields these questions every day to help service buyers make informed decisions for their facilities. We can't speak for every independent service provider but, using our own scope and expertise as an example, we hope to show you some of what's available as you approach the third-party market for service on your medical imaging equipment. Join us as we tackle the FAQs of buying medical imaging service.