Your Guide to Medical Imaging Equipment

If you're considering purchasing MRI scanner service coverage, you're probably wondering how much, if any, of that coverage extends to your scanner's coils. That's a great question, and one that our service department hears all the time.

If you use an OEC 9800 C-arm you're already familiar with the twenty little arrows that scroll across the display on your system during boot-up. You probably also already know there are 20 different sequences of those arrows that indicate different problems your 9800 may be having. As C-arm service providers we're no strangers to any of the 20 sequences, but we can definitely say that some of them come up more often than others.

Below, we'll share with you the three most common errors users see on the OEC 9800 and some steps you can take to help clear them up and get back to scanning.

It should come as no surprise that your imaging equipment, just like a vehicle, requires regular maintenance to keep running.  With a car, your transmission needs to be flushed, oil changed, filters cleaned, and windshield wiper fluid topped off. But sometimes, when we pick our vehicles up from a garage (and nearly every time when we see the bill) we begin to wonder exactly what was done to our cars. It is no different with medical imaging equipment.

If you’ve been in an MRI facility, you've probably noticed a large red button in a conspicuous place. Did you feel the urge to press it? Did you wonder what would happen if you did? Maybe, but you'd NEVER actually press it – because you are not 7 years old, right? What you were looking at was, essentially, the MRI’s “Off” button. Turning an MRI off can be done in a couple different ways: one that's slower, easier on the machine, and a whole lot cheaper, but the big, red button is by far the more exciting. It even has a cool name: "quench". If you're unsure of what happens when an MRI quenches, this blog is for you!