Your Guide to Medical Imaging Equipment

If you own or operate a PET/CT, the moment you heard about NEMA standard XR-29 for CT scanners, your eyebrows, your ears, and the little hairs on the back of your neck probably all shot up in unison, and you thought: "Does that apply to my equipment too?" 

Since we originally published this article in 2014, current and prospective PET/CT users have continued to ask us this same question. Back then, there wasn't a lot of clarity to be had. Now, however, with XR-29 non-compliance penalties in full swing, the answers are in the open. Watch the brief clip below for an explanation of how NEMA XR-29 affects PET/CT equipment.

In the continuous effort of medical imaging manufacturers to push their technology forward, improve patient and doctor experiences, and remain competitive in the marketplace, Philips has released a newer generation of their PET/CT product: the Ingenuity TF. The new scanner is, in some ways, an advancement of their Gemini TF PET/CT scanners. The question is: In which ways is it an advancement, and do those advancements make it a "no-brainer" upgrade for facilities looking to balance clinical performance and capital costs? 

To help you know the difference, we've compared these two PET/CT systems below. You'll see what's the same, what's different, and how the value proposition shakes out between the Gemini TF and the Ingenuity TF.

The Philips Gemini PET/CT line is now three generations deep. From the Gemini Dual and 16 Power, to the Gemini GXL, to the Gemini TF, Philips has been improving the image quality and detection accuracy of their PET/CT equipment every few years. Sometimes, these changes come quickly enough that, unless you keep your ear to the ground on all things tech, a new iteration can be easy to miss.

Since we know many of you are too busy serving patients, building practices, and managing imaging departments to monitor the equipment industry constantly, we've taken care of the legwork of comparing the last two Philips PET/CT models to emerge on the secondary market for you. Below you'll find a comparison of the Gemini GXL and the Gemini TF. You'll learn what they share, how they differ, and where each one shines.

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As with all modalities of imaging equipment, PET scanning is gradually moving in the direction of greater and greater diagnostic accuracy. For PET in particular, the biggest step in that direction of the last decade has been the development and proliferation of time of flight technology.

For those who may be using PET systems older than ten years, or newer systems without the time of flight option enabled, there are benefits via time of flight you'll want to explore as the time to upgrade your equipment draws nearer. For those who may be only just entering the PET arena, there are a number of reasons why a time of flight-equipped system shold be at the top of your list of considerations. Wherever you may fall on the PET user spectrum, we'll share below more details about what time of flight features actually do and what they mean for PET users and patients alike.