Brian Gill's Ultrasound Machine Reviews, news, and advice

Cypress, Vivid i and Vivid e

Today I posted some information to one of the newsgroups I'm on that I thought might be interesting to anyone looking into a portable ultrasound. I've spent a lot of time with these portables and I've been watching the Hand carried Ultrasound market really take off over the last year. GE has really taken the lead with this and it's been quite impressive. I love SonoSite and what they do, but GE has done a really nice job with the Hand Carried Ultrasound units.

vivid i and e

Posted by: "Brian Gill"

Thu Apr 26, 2007 7:08 am (PST)

Gillian,

If you don't need a highly durable machine, I would get the Vivide if
you have the funds. If you are doing a lot of vascular and have the
money, I would take a close look at the Vividi because the CrossXBeam
and SRI (Speckle Reduction Imaging) functions are really outstanding and
compare well to the larger console units.

The Vivid i is the steroid-enhanced Vivid e, essentially. It's a larger
platform (a larger laptop system), but also has more of the features
that you would find on the console systems, such as CrossXBeam or
Speckle Reduction Imaging. The Vivid i is the more robust system of the
two. The Micromaxx is a nice system, and very very durable... you won't
find the same durability from the GE systems. We find the GE systems to
be superior in quality, but not in durability. As far as the Cypress is
concerned, you're simply not going to get the penetration in cardiac and
vascular applications that you would see on the GE systems. When we demo
a Cypress for a carotid on a 300lb man, it's very difficult to get a
good image....whereas the GE "vivid i" looks great. Don't get me wrong, I love the
Cypress, particularly becuase it's a tough machine, and its pricepoint
of about $26,000 USD is really hard to beat (it also has the stress echo
package). The Titan can't touch it for these applications.

These don't run $100k, either. with two probes, the Vivid i sells in the
low $60,000 range for a high quality used system in the United States.
The Vivide is about $48,000. You can call me if you have any questions.
I have both available if you're looking.

Thanks,
Brian Gill
President, GPS Medical, Inc.
http://www.gpsmed.com
866-347-7633 x 206

Vivid 7 Dimension 4D cardiac ultrasound

Last week I had my first extensive look at a Vivid 7 Dimension BT06 with 4D when it hit our doors. I spent some time with the 4D and it's quite an impressive piece of equipment.
Probably the coolest thing is the fact that the 4D probe is purely electronic. While this isn't new for cardiac, it  just makes me wonder how long it will take the Obstetric 4D probes be fully electronic instead of the mechanical ones they use now. This 4V probe for the Vivid 7 is huge (see photos). It's a good 3-4 times the size of the standard M4S probe for the Vivid 7 and it's a bit awkward. But this isn't the probe you'd use for scanning the whole time anyway... you'd use it for the 4D application, which is quite cool... particularly because it's true real-time imaging.... the Obstetric 4D stuff is real-time, but it takes a compilation of slices and builds the image while the transducer inside the case is swiveling back-and-forth. The 3V probe does it all digitally and has no moving parts, keeping the frame-rate high and providing you, essentially, with true real-time. I tried pulling some images off the machine, but it was giving me a heck of a time. I'll try and get some images of my heart up soon.

Overall this is a really slick ultrasound. The user interface still has a bit to be desired, although it's come a long way from the old days ... it still doesn't quite match up to that of GE's Voluson, Logiq 9, Seimens Antares or some of the other cool new UI's coming out these days. The image quality is outstanding and the 4D is really quite amazing. Sure, it has a ways to go, but acquisition time is incredible and it's quite easy to use (optimization will be the problem, but this is quite a bit easier to understand and get used to than the Obstetric 4D ultrasound). I also liked the Multiplane imaging, which gives a nice perspective of the heart in a synchronized view (without having to use a stress echo protocol).

The Vivid 7 Dimension BT06 can save images to disk very quickly... I was really impressed with the speed in which it would store loops and still images... not a break in productivity at all. And maybe one of the coolest gee-whiz factors is the color Doppler in 4D scanning, which has very solid frame rates and decent color that is mapped atop the 4D image... I didn't find it to be tremendously refined, but you can see where this is going and what's to come in the future. One of these days I'll get onsite with a customer and spend some time with this 4D application and see how truly useful it is for the everyday cardiologist.... and how long it will be until it's truly applicable and affordable.

Our service guys checked it out, too, and it appears that its reliability will be similar to that of the other Vivid systems (good)... Windows based systems with semi-predictable hard drives. This system uses Windows XP Embedded, which is essentially a smaller, optimized version of Windows XP that removes all that extra Operating System junk that's not needed in the ultrasound. We haven't had time to play with it a whole lot, but I'm sure it'll reduce potential software and driver conflicts, and free up valuable RAM (hence the faster frame-rates, quicker acquisition time, faster boot-up time, etc). the machine boots in just under 2 minutes, which isn't too bad considering all that's in this machine.

Ever since we saw the Voluson systems running Windows 2K (and the Medison systems on Windows 95 before that), we had a feeling that Windows would be driving the ultrasounds of the future... it greatly reduced the overhead of a complex web of circuit boards, which add weight, problems and size to the ultrasound. It also predicted the rise of the HCU (Hand-Carried Ultrasound) market in which we would quickly see high-quality laptop-sized ultrasounds, which will be a story for another day. For now, we've got to ship this Vivid 7 to our customer today, who will hopefully be as impressed as we were with this machine. The Windows thing has got me thinking about another blog on the emergence of the HCU market and how huge it's going to be.

Introduction

Welcome to my blog on diagnostic ultrasound. I plan on using this blog to discuss new things I learn in the industry as well as my impressions on the latest machines. I'll also use this space to discuss 3D/4D ultrasound as it seems most of the questions I receive refer to this ever-expanding world. All of this will be my opinion on various topics in the ultrasound world, and I'll also include things about myself that I feel might be interesting to the readers.
Thanks,
Brian Gill
President, GPS Medical
www.gpsmed.com