The Ultrasound Department at Leicester General Hospital now has three Philips Ultrasound HDI 5000s working continuously every day on general ultrasound cases
Janet Brookes, clinical ultrasound specialist at Leicester, said: "We first had an HDI 3000 which was very popular because it was so user friendly and when the high specification HDI 5000 came out, it too was easy to use.
Having systems from the same company makes good sense as it helps for training purposes and connection to our Pacs system.
Also we have a full selection of probes that are interchangeable with all three machines.
We have found the probes for small parts and superficial work, such as musculoskeletal imaging, are especially good." "The colour flow on the HDI 5000 is particularly impressive because there is virtually no flash artefact after applying colour Doppler.
The grey scale is good too and you can switch quickly between different modes without having to go through many processes to get to what you actually need.
In all, the reliability of Philips Ultrasound systems has stood the test of time and we have had very good service from the company." Brookes added: "The Philips Ultrasound courses are very useful for sonographers' continuing professional development.
They are affordable and besides the clinical application lectures, they promote improved awareness of the technical adjustments that can be made to improve image quality. Sometimes, you are concentrating so hard on the scan that you can easily forget all the instrument is capable of."
