Atlas Medical Technologies, a refurbisher of quality CT based simulators, also maintains a squad of dedicated service technicians to guarantee the accuracy of its refurbished machines. "At the time of installation it's absolutely critical to make sure these machines are calibrated down to the precise millimeter," explains Atlas's President, Rick Stockton. "Otherwise they won't be useful for precision demanding radiation therapies such as stereotactic, tomotheraphy and gammaknife. We try to maintain an extremely low ratio of service engineers to customer installations. We're talking about treating cancer so there's no room for downtime."

That, indeed, is a theme stressed by most people in the industry: the vital necessity for reliability and accuracy, and what it requires as it relates to quality refurbished LINACs and CT simulators. "There's a growing demand for multi-slice CT, especially in high-end oncology procedures," says Greg Kramer, President, C&G Technologies, Inc., Jeffersonville, IN. "The new multi-channel detector assembly is multitudes more sensitive than the single slice CT. But it takes specialized equipment and skills to refurbish it properly. It's not uncommon to spend up to 100 engineering hours in this area alone." Kramer says the time is well spent with image quality and reliability the payoff.


The major players

While C&G technologies services and refurbishes primarily GE CT scanners for simulation ("They're widely accepted and easily supported."), Kramer says Toshiba, Varian, Siemens, Phillips, Elekta, and Nucletron-Oldelft are all OEMs noted for quality. Different servicers and refurbishers specialize in different brands so it pays to research who does what before trusting your oncology capabilities to an outside supplier. The DOTmed Services Directory is a good place to start researching the particular capabilities of regional suppliers and services.




"Each manufacturer offers differing design solutions. Each has strengths and weaknesses," says Tony Richardson, in charge of marketing and sales for Oncology Services International, a New Jersey supplier and servicer of state-of-the-art radiology oncology equipment. "Manufacturers typically make a dual energy machine with photons and electrons and a smaller lighter unit which may have only a single energy photons and perhaps no electrons. These cover most medical applications. You want to make sure individuals servicing your machine or getting parts fully understand the difference." Richardson's company employs 60 field service engineers and 15 more at its refurbishment facilities.

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