by
Gus Iversen, Editor in Chief | November 24, 2014
From the October 2014 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine
Coil repair—options abound
Single coils for head/neck/spine imaging represent a prime example of channel customization. Depending on which part of the anatomy a physician is interested in looking at, they can activate the corresponding parts of the coil. Jay Miller, the president of IMRIS, says they have been making a lot of headway with wireless, disposable coils. Those coils offer a solution to coil maintenance, which can lead to workflow problems if a piece of equipment fails.
Clarkson at Siemens says, “If a coil breaks down we will immediately ship one out to the customer so they can keep working. We will take back the broken coil, do a post-mortem on it, assess it and see if we can repair it.”
Toshiba has service warehouses across the country. “If a coil is broken the turnaround time is 24 hours,” says Narayan. Almost every Toshiba system sold today includes their 16-channel flexible coil, which can be used for imaging any part of the body so, “If your muscular skeletal imaging coil breaks down, “ says Narayan, “you can immediately use the 16-channel flex coil to replace it.”
ScanMed repairs coils as an independent service organization. When asked why ISOs are as good (or better) than manufacturers, Jones says, “The answer depends on the certifications, capabilities, and the knowledge of the company. If they can diagnose, electronically repair, aesthetically refurbish, and offer validation and warranty, then why not?” Of course, not all independent service options can offer all of that. Jones says anyone can start a company calling themselves coil repair experts, and the ineptitude of so many of them actually do a disservice to his business because clients don’t know better. Jones emphasizes the importance of ISO certification 13485 and FDA approval saying, “If you Google ‘MR coil repair,’ more than fifty percent of the results do not have that stuff.”
Wes Solmos, Coils Account Manager for MRIcoilrepair.com, describes his company as the only one in the market that can handle full coil repair under one roof. He would agree with Jones’ sentiment; “The big thing our customers like is that we’re medically certified,” says Solmos, “A broken surface coil that we need to reverse engineer and 3-D print mechanical parts for? We can handle that.”
Jones says a broken coil can mean many things. Sometimes it’s a simple electronic component failure which can be easy to find and correct. Other times it’s something more involved, like a complex connector head that has been dropped and broken.
“A lot of times we see broken pins in the output cable connector,” says Solmos, “Those are the pins that connect a coil to the actual system or tabletop.” Occasionally Solmos and his colleagues see twenty-year-old coils, “but those come a little bit more from our international business.” He says they function on the same RF theory and that makes servicing them possible.
