by
Diana Bradley, Staff Writer | April 19, 2012
From the April 2012 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine
Advanced imaging capabilities have been a hot topic in the C-arm market during the past 12 months. A popular option for spine surgery procedures is 3-D image reconstruction.
“3-D image reconstruction on a C-arm is competing with a more dedicated CT-like imaging procedure to get a good axial view of the spine,” says Shrawder. “Going with the trend towards more minimally invasive spine surgery, 3-D views will enable that field to make the progress they are looking for.”
Another big trend in the industry has been the merging of more C-arm technologies. For example, Ziehm has started to combine 2-D imaging with a 3-D module on one platform.
“Further trends are the open interface to medical equipment in the periphery, such as navigation systems,” adds Martin Herzmann, Ziehm’s director of global marketing. “The communication between the numerous systems that interact in the OR will certainly play a bigger role in the future.”
The Great Divide: FD and II
Last year, flat panel detector technology was just beginning to gain market attention. And according to Jeff Weiss, CEO of refurb company Atlantis Worldwide LLC., the new technology is still just a blip on the radar.
“I would have thought people would have wanted FD as opposed to image intensifiers, but that new technology does not seem to be a reason for facilities to buy the new system,” he says. “Plus, you are looking at a price difference of $200,000 versus $100,000 or less in general.”
The more sophisticated and knowledgeable customers will most likely focus not on technology for the sake of technology, but on best image quality and best dose combination. According to Shrawder, these customers aren’t ready to move to flat panel detector technology yet.
“FD tends to add cost, reduce reliability of the system, and worst of all, requires more X-ray dose to provide the same image quality as the II or analog version of a C-arm,” he says. “It seems FD has been launched by some companies prematurely, before it was actually creating tangible benefits for the users.”
This appears to be reinforced by the pre-owned market, as 99.99 percent of C-arms still have IIs, according to Matthew Blaustein, president of refurb company Bluestone Diagnostics Inc.
However, not everyone agrees with the opinion that FD has yet to make a move on the market, as other companies view its continued adoption as the sector’s biggest news over the past year. FD has gone from being a technology Philips was only really discussing with major teaching hospitals, to being a technology the company now discusses with nearly every customer. Manum notes that he isn’t just seeing this with Philips’ full-sized C-arms, but also in the mini C-arm realm.
