by; Patrick Nefos, Senior Engineer at E. I. Medical Imaging
The Engineers Two Cents
You are probably wondering where the concept for our rugged Ibex® portable ultrasound comes from. We have many design inputs for the Ibex®, not limited to:
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History: What we learned from previous ultrasound generations.
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Customers: What would make this a better tool for you?
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Innovation: What might be a new use for our ultrasound if only we had _______.
I will briefly touch on these three design inputs:
History: We have learned from previous ultrasound generations:
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Image - If this system does not image clearly...I have the wrong tool.
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Durability - If this system is broken, I can not work.
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Portability - If this system is too heavy or battery time too short.
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Features - Ease and speed of use. Features must save time.
Customers: Customer feedback is extremely valuable. Our Ibex® platform was designed to accommodate the unanticipated customer request. We have had three public firmware releases in the first year with a marked increase in image quality each time. Many of the new features were the result of one customer request. Ibex® continues to improve, thanks to your input.
Innovation: We always consider what could make your job easier. Maybe a wider field of view would make finding ovaries faster. Maybe less key presses to save an image would save time. Maybe you need a special table loaded that you have used for years.
We also look at what could be. What if by animal number or RFID, you could pull images wirelessly from your computer onto the compact flash card so they would be ready to review next to today's scans? How about saving the image to your heard management database with your keyed data wirelessly? How about using the Ibex® for automatic Backfat, InterMuscular Fat or Quality Grade, in real-time without a capture device or the loss of resolution from such device?
There are great things happening here! Keep your ideas coming.
Patrick