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John R. Fischer, Senior Reporter | April 30, 2018
From the April 2018 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine
Some OEMs have developed, or are in the process of developing, fixed robotic angiography systems that provide elements of mobile C-arm technology and a variety of other benefits. Gustavo Perez-Fernandez, president of GE Healthcare’s Imaging Guided Solutions, says such capabilities enable greater flexibility and enhanced workflow.
“You provide that kind of freedom to the interventional surgeons, enabling interdisciplinary teams to transform from an operational lab into an operating room seamlessly,” he told HCB News, referencing GE’s IGS 7 platform, which he calls a first-of-its-kind, “semi-fixed system.”
Experts agree that although mobile and fixed angiography solutions are evolving, they each retain unique value propositions.
Although fixed systems began shifting from image intensifiers to flat-panel detectors more than seven years ago, mobile C-arms have only begun making that transition in the last two or three years. With benefits for image resolution and 3-D imaging, flat panels have become part of the majority of mobile C-arm technologies on the market.
Emphasis on dose optimization and limiting radiation
exposure to patients and providers alike has led to
the design of safer-performing solutions, such as
Hologic’s Fluroscan Insight FD mini C-arm, a mobile
solution that can lower dose by up to 50 percent
while still retaining high image quality.
“You can be more accurate in positioning any device in the patient’s body because you can look at it three dimensionally,” says Kulkarni. “This means it would result in lower complication rates, better clinical outcomes and reduced length of stay and, therefore, lower costs.”
Unlike fixed systems, which all utilize flat-panel technology, Kulkarni says mobile solutions with image intensifiers are still available to providers that require quality imaging on a constrained budget.
“For the kind of work that mobile C-arms are being used for, image intensifiers were able to do the job reasonably well,” he says. “The images weren’t the crisp and beautiful images that the flat-panel detectors give, but they worked.”
The desire for better images has led to other demands, including 4K resolution and the addition of graphic processing units like those commonly found in cell phones and computer workstations.
