Buying an US machine is like buying a car and you want a week-long test drive. If they won’t give it to you to use for a week move on.
Choose what you want to spend and what you can afford (as they usually aren’t the same) and choose a machine from each producer in that price range.
Have all the sales reps send you sample images (Cardiac, abdomen, with and without Color Doppler and Power Doppler) form that machine in that price range then:
Buying an US machine is like buying a car and you want a week-long test drive. If they won’t give it to you to use for a week move on.
Choose what you want to spend and what you can afford (as they usually aren’t the same) and choose a machine from each producer in that price range.
Have all the sales reps send you sample images (Cardiac, abdomen, with and without Color Doppler and Power Doppler) form that machine in that price range then:
You have to select what image meets your eye as well as everyone sees things differently and subjective evaluation is important and what is easy on the eye. The GE has a look, Biosound has a different look as do Sonoscape Toshiba, Philips …same thing. DR same issue when selecting different companies.
Then have the sales rep show you how to take an image set that you produce on the machine and send in dicom and also offload in a universal format like jpeg/avi or mpeg so the images can be seen on any normal computer as well as a dicom viewer. This will save you hassles down the line when moving images around in a clinical setting. Give + points to the machine that does this in the least amount of steps…apple vs pc scenario and user friendliness.
Then look at the infrastructure for repairs and what the turnaround time is and what is covered as the support is even more important than the machine and varies greatly as they all have issues sooner or later believe me.
I think once you do this you will see who will support you and who will drop off and you can weed out the images that your eye doesn’t like right from the beginning.
My guess is you will be left with 2-3 machines to actually drive and use and then choose.
Hope this helps and please add to this post based on your experiences.
Comments
I totally agree with you,
I totally agree with you, Eric. But I would add another point regarding the price range: Some companies offer a machine including 2 or 3 probes for a certain amount. If you want to buy another probe later it’s extremely expensive. So the costs of other probes should be taken into account. Moreover the image settings should be easy to change without going through drop-down menus. Means, if you want to change for instance the sector angle, the dynamic range, the compression and so forth. This makes a machine more universal to use (cardiac/abdomen). A specific computer software providing all the measurement tools similar to the ultrasound machine is also very useful. But the most important thing is – as you said – the support. If you have a problem it should ideally be solved within one to two days – repair or loaner machine.
I totally agree with you,
I totally agree with you, Eric. But I would add another point regarding the price range: Some companies offer a machine including 2 or 3 probes for a certain amount. If you want to buy another probe later it’s extremely expensive. So the costs of other probes should be taken into account. Moreover the image settings should be easy to change without going through drop-down menus. Means, if you want to change for instance the sector angle, the dynamic range, the compression and so forth. This makes a machine more universal to use (cardiac/abdomen). A specific computer software providing all the measurement tools similar to the ultrasound machine is also very useful. But the most important thing is – as you said – the support. If you have a problem it should ideally be solved within one to two days – repair or loaner machine.