Inventory – First and foremost, any medical imaging parts supplier you work with must carry replacement parts for the majority of equipment you maintain. Most suppliers have on-line inventories that can help you determine which suppliers meet most of your medical imaging parts needs.

Warranty – What kind of warranty does the supplier offer? If medical imaging parts are refurbished, who is refurbishing? Is there ISO-based quality control?

Return/Exchange policy – What is their policy for returning a medical imaging part that has been incorrectly ordered? Is there a time limit? Does the company give money back or exchange only?

Shipping – Shipping and handling costs can be the hidden high cost component of the purchase price. Be sure you understand all S&H costs ahead of time. Also, can the company absolutely, positively get you a medical imaging part overnight?

Customer service – Will the company work with you to solve your problem, whatever it is? Is customer service available 24/7? Are there BMETs available to help you trouble shoot medical imaging parts issues if necessary? Use this checklist to evaluate vendors. Select two or three vendors that you can rely on. Do not depend on one vendor for all your needs; remember the “all my eggs in one basket” rule.

Cost is not a straightforward issue. If you search for the lowest cost, you may find yourself with medical imaging parts that are inferior in quality. However, you certainly don’t want to get burned by paying premium prices if you don’t have to. There are two considerations you can make. First, is the medical imaging part inherently complex so that you should apply a “get what you pay for” principle and buy premium? Or, is the part rather simple so that the “plain vanilla” low cost version will do. Second, is the amount of money you will need to spend significant enough to warrant the work? Look at the range of prices in the marketplace. If there is a general range, that probably means that you will be paying about the same price everywhere, so go ahead and buy the medical imaging part based on other criteria. If there are dramatic highs and lows, you need to understand why these differences exist. For example, is the low priced supplier able to keep his overhead so low that everything is a bargain? Great! Or is he selling inferior product?

For the raging medical imaging equipment and parts cost, it is indeed wise to research the market, compare from suppliers and study how you can get an affordable yet equally high-grade medical imaging supplies.

Recently published papers describe testing completed on the molecule which shows that Fe8 provides good contract in non-clinical MRI studies over a specific range of concentrations, dispelling an earlier confusion about the value of Fe8 in medical imaging. The earlier research had resulted in conflicting results because the concentration of Fe8 had not been accounted for during testing.

These advances are due in part to advances in the field of nanotechnology. Nanotechnology involves working with particles that are one billionth of a meter thick. The techniques that are available to measure and manipulate such small particles of matter will support additional research on materials such as FE8. Researchers are hoping that these newer medical imaging contrast media will be able to be manipulated for even greater benefit than this initial research suggests. For example, researchers are seeking ways to “turn on” and “turn off” the medical imaging contrast qualities by synthesizing contrast media that binds only to certain other molecules or does so only when subject to specific conditions that can be monitored and managed.

Although this breakthrough in contrast media for medical imaging is extremely promising and may well provide a great leap forward in the quality of magnetic resonance imaging, there is still a great deal of testing and research to be accomplished before Fe8 can be made available for use in human population medical imaging studies.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology has been collaborating with researchers at Florida State University and the University of Colorado at Boulder to create new medical imaging contrast materials that are highly magnetic, highly uniform (and thereby easier to manage) and very small. This combination of attributes will work together to create a very safe, very predictable, highly effective contract solution for use in medical imaging.

However, the BMET continues to evolve and as it does, the educational requirements for working on medical imaging equipment have begun to increase as well. The BMET profession has begun to follow the path of many other professions both within and outside of the medical field where more and more education is required to obtain a job and/or advance within a job category. BMETs report that employers are beginning to require bachelor’s degrees for advancement to a supervisory level or in some cases to become employed as a BMET within some institutions. While this requirement may limit the job opportunities for some current BMETs, the good news is that with increased educational requirements comes the opportunity for higher salaries. Studies show that entrance salaries for BMETs range from $20,000-$30,000. However, senior and supervisory positions can command salaries as high as $80,000. The future appears bright for career growth in the area of medical imaging equipment maintenance and repair.

First and foremost, the demand for BMETs is growing. This growth is fueled both by the growth in new medical imaging equipment and technologies that require BMET expertise and by the need for revenue by institutions that own medical imaging equipment. As institutions such as hospitals recognize that downtime on an important piece of medical imaging equipment affects revenue generation, there is pressure to add BMETs to hospital staff to assure that all medical imaging equipment is maintained in good order and that expensive service contracts are used as minimally as possible. The U.S. Department of Labor and the Association for the Advancement of Medical imaging predict that the number of BMET jobs in the US will increase 24% to 31% through the year 2010.

Silicone Breast Implants Are Unsafe, Despite FDA Approval, Opinion Piece Says 
Despite FDA’s recent approval of silicone breast implants, there still are “considerable risks that women must consider before walking into the operating room,” Edward Melmed, a Dallas-based plastic surgeon, and Judy Norsigian, executive director of Our Bodies Ourselves, write in a Boston Globe opinion piece (Melmed/Norsigian, Boston Globe, 2/2). [click link for full article]

MIT Develops Nanoparticles to Fight Cancer 
U.S. scientists have created nanoparticles that mimic blood platelets to carry out internal medical missions, such as cancer imaging and drug delivery.

MEDRAD eCoil(TM) Product Line Awarded for Innovation 
MEDRAD’s innovative product line of endorectal MR coils, eCoil, has received the Frost & Sullivan Product Differentiation Innovation Award for offering “unprecedented” MR imaging of prostate, colon, and cervix regions.

High-Tech CT Useful in Spotting Heart Disease
Austin American-Statesman - CT angiography (CTA) with a 16-detector scanner was used to check for narrowing of the patients’ coronary arteries. “Our results indicated that a negative finding on computed tomography angiography virtually eliminated the possibility of having …
Golfers, not patients, should work on strokes (The Facts)
Every year, 960,000 Americans die of stroke, this country s No. 3 killer. Clogged carotid arteries can cause stroke. Carotid arteries are located on either side of our neck. They deliver oxygen-rich blood from the heart to the head.
Arrhythmogenic Right Ventricular Dysplasia (ARVD) - WSOCtv.com

Parks finds he only has one kidney
Tulsa World - Gundy said Parks received an ultrasound Thursday that revealed he had just one kidney. “He is real fortunate they were able to find that,” Gundy said. “He loved to play the game, and today we had to tell him that he couldn’t.” Parks may be

OSUs Parks will play no more football
KOTV - An ultrasound was then done on the cyst and it revealed Parks’ right kidney is enlarged and he doesn’t have a left kidney. The condition isn’t life threatening but playing a contact sport would put Parks at high risk if the kidney is injured. Cowboys

‘Smart Pigs’ Keep Oil Pipelines Clean
WINK TV - Instead, BP had relied mostly on exterior ultrasound to monitor the pipes’ integrity, believing the risk of corrosion was low because they carried market-ready crude or processed oil that had been stripped of harmful water, gas, and solids. BP now

Mayfair on course following surgery
Myrtle Beach Online - Mayfair had an ultrasound test done in Flint, Mich., on Monday, July 31, and went to lunch with his girlfriend, golf broadcaster Tami Proctor, while it was studied. The tests came back positive and Mayfair needed to have dye injected through his body

Pipeline rules need to be set, many say
El Di rio La Estrella - knew that BP had not used the pigs on its 30- to 34-inch transit lines since 1992 in one case and 1998 in another, but that it accepted the company’s reasoning about why that was not necessary and why the company could rely on more narrow ultrasound

Chest X-Rays May Boost Breast Cancer Risk for Some
Austin American-Statesman - Goldgar, cautioned that the findings were preliminary and that more studies are needed before the relative risks and benefits of mammography, which relies on X-ray technology, could be weighed. “We do not want to get into making specific …
Fuji Photo to Challenge GE in Mammography Equipment (Update1) (Bloomberg.com)
Aug. 17 (Bloomberg) — Fuji Photo Film Co. is challenging General Electric Co.’s dominance of the U.S. market for digital breast-cancer detectors after it received permission to sell a device that is cheaper than GE’s equipment.
Health events - Cincinnati Enquirer

Books : Dr. Susan Love’s Breast Book:4th Edition 2005
Science Daily - New information includes that on mammography screening, the breast cancer gene, the metastatic phase of breast cancer, the connection between mind and body, prevention and the importance of political awareness and action. Mixing, Then Un-mixing Oil …