On Sun, 10 Sep 2006 14:36:27 +0100, Roy Schestowitz wrote:
> Siemens' Medical Unit Puts Suse Linux Into MRI Products
>
> ,----[ Quote ]
> | The company employs approximately 33,000 people worldwide and operates
> | in more than 120 countries.
> `----
>
> http://www.linuxinsider.com/rsstory/52892.html
>
> This was mentioned once before, but it was not yet official. A funny story is
> that we have a new Siemens scanner down at Hope Hospital. I even got scanned
> on two occasions for a friend's experiment. The scanner's front end, which
> runs Windows underneath, crashed on my first visit and took many hours (if
> not a day), as well as several Philips engineers, in order to recover.
>
> My understanding was that it was not an unusual event. It is in fact
> _expected and predicted_ to happen quite frequently. Lack of reliability is
> taken for granted. I heard about the main guy, Barry, losing heaps of
> crucial patient data that he had not backed up. So long to having patients'
> lives rely on Microsoft Windows. And have that rubbish software installed on
> a 5-million dollar equipment. Apparently, Siemens learned their lesson.
At the hospital where I work we have three full body General Electric MRI
machines and one Philips extremity MRI scanner. The machines themselves
don't run Windows, what they run is proprietary. SGI Workstations form the
front end here. The SGI's control the machines and do the primary
rendering. The attending radiologist views the scans as they occur and
selects the images that best indicate the presence or the absence whatever
was suspected. The physicians have three fundamental ways of viewing the
MRI scans. One is where the image is transferred to a transparency so that
it can be viewed on a typical back lit x-ray board. The other is for the
physician to view the stored images using SGI workstations set up in the
viewing library. The final method is via CD-ROM, which surprisingly in
this day and age is the least favourite method.
The machines use liquid helium for cooling the superconducting
electromagnet. Each machine also has it's own little chilled water system
for cooling the computer room for each machine. Room temperature is
critical because as the room warms up the RF amplifiers start to drift
wildly. Normally the room is at 19C, if the room temperature rises to 21C
an alarm goes off and if the room hits a stifling 24C the machine is shut
down.
--
Bobbie the Triple Killer
http://members.shaw.ca/bobbie4/index.htm
email Bobbie @ bobbie4R3MOV3TH1S@xxxxxxx
remember to 'remove this'
Bobbie recently switched to Ubuntu 6.
Why? Cause he can, that's why.
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