This report originally appeared in the November 2010 issue of DOTmed Business News

While radiographic and fluoroscopic equipment are linked because they both begin with an X-ray source to initiate the imaging process, OEM leaders such as Siemens, Philips, Shimadzu, Toshiba and GE Healthcare tend to think of these rad and R/F rooms as two separate entities when creating new products and designs.

When it comes to rad and R/F equipment choices, they can run the gamut from portable X-ray to heavy-duty remote R/F rooms. Surprisingly, there hasn’t been any big game changer in X-ray rooms since the advent of DR panels in 2001.
“The continued transition to digital is certainly the newsworthy part of this industry,” says Dave Widmann, global general manager of rad/R/F for GE Healthcare’s X-ray business. “We have a lot going on in our X-ray business right now and this is really a fun time to be part of the global X-ray business. Our advanced applications continue to be well-received, and I think this really is the future of digital X-ray. Not just driving productivity with film-less-ness, but using the data in a different way to analyze disease.”

Widmann estimates that in the U.S., there are still less than 50 percent of health care facilities that have made the switch, and even less in other parts of the world.

The next big thing
The introduction of wireless panels is gaining momentum in 2010 and seems to be the direction most OEMs are heading.

Wireless panels, after being exposed, communicate with the main workstation and send the encrypted image to be seen seconds later in the workstation’s QA window.

“These panels are truly wireless rather than the tetherless style of CR panels which need to be placed in a reader after being exposed,” says Frank Serrao, manager of business development and marketing for Shimadzu Medical Systems. “With the introduction of the wireless DR panels, Shimadzu is busy integrating these new panels into the mobile systems.”

According to Gerhard Schmiedel, vice president of special systems for Siemens Healthcare, there are three key benefits to going wireless.

“You can operate a wireless detector like a cassette and place it where you want and do the examination. No longer does the patient have to move so the detector can move,” he says. “We wanted something like a cassette in the past, but with better images. This is faster and offers better imaging. In the past you had to have more cassettes, you needed to do three to four views with a patient; now you can do one after another. A big advantage in that one detector can do it all.”

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