Your Guide to Medical Imaging Equipment

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!

If you've owned or operated an MRI machine for even just a few years of the last decade, you know that the cost per liter of the liquid helium used to cool your magnet has risen, year-over-year, to record high levels. And, if you've seen the invoice for a helium fill from your gas provider, you know it's a tough pill to swallow. So what's to be done? Do we "grin and bear it" until prices (hopefully) come down? That's one way to handle it. Or, you could take some proactive steps to mitigate helium costs now.

Below, we'll share why the shortage is likely to continue, and how finding the right helium partner can lead to considerable savings and improved sustainability for your MRI services.

So, you're running your GE CT and you start hearing a rattle, a jitter, or a knock. It never made that sound before, and you're pretty sure it shouldn't make that sound at all. Why is it doing that?

With so many moving parts, there are a few things that can create a similar sound inside the gantry of a GE CT scanner, however, one of the most common for is the axial encoder. Keep reading to learn what you should do to solve the problem.