Ron Viola, co-owner of First Source, says the GE AMX 4 unit is the “starship of the industry.”

For Viola’s company, CR has been a core focus of the business over the past year but it recently introduced the DR Liberty Cordless DR Integration Kit, designed for integration with the portable systems that are already in use in hospitals. “Our solution is really made to integrate to a customer’s equipment base,” he says.

The kit can be used to upgrade GE AMX 4 and AMX 4+ systems. The installation process takes less than an hour, says Viola.
Carestream Health also has a solution that enables existing mobile CR customers to upgrade to DR. Since its release in May, the company’s DRX-Mobile Retrofit Kit has been positively received by providers, says Eileen Heizyk, marketing manager, digital capture solutions with Carestream. The kit is available for popular GE, Siemens and Shimadzu systems. The installation process takes about four hours. “We’ve had sites running and trained within a day,” says Heizyk.

End-users have a choice of Carestream detectors – the DRX-1, a gadolinium detector or the DRX-1C, a cesium option for dose-sensitive applications. The list price of the retrofit kit with a new detector is about $170,000.

Carestream also offers an optional tube and line visualization software feature. “With one exposure, you actually get two images: the traditional image and a companion image that shows enhanced visualization of the tubes and lines, so that health care professionals can make sure that they have everything placed correctly in the patient,” says Heizyk.

The case for CR
While many players in the X-ray segment are introducing wireless DR portables, Fujifilm Medical Systems, Inc. is in no rush to jump on the trend.

At RSNA, Fujifilm debuted an upgraded version of its CR system called the FCR Go 2. In the two years since the FCR Go was introduced, the company amassed a more than 42 percent market share, shipping more than 600 units worldwide. “We expected it to do well but it exceeded our expectations since we first released it,” says Rob Fabrizio, the company’s senior marketing manager.

Incorporating customer feedback to enhance the unit, Fujifilm enlarged the display on board of the workstation to a full-size screen. The output rating of the X-ray system was also brought up from 15kV to 32kV, allowing for higher penetration.

The battery life wasn’t overlooked either. “We’ve added the ability to continue using everything on the system, except for exposure and driving, while the system is plugged in charging,” says Fabrizio. “It gives [users] additional use of the system between portable runs, so they don’t have to shut the system down to charge it. They can leave everything turned on and continue using the reader device and the workstation with the system plugged into the wall.”

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