PortaVision Medical unveiled a new line of portable X-ray systems last month at the annual Radiological Society of North America (RSNA) conference in Chicago.

Designed to provide images similar in quality to C-arms, the solutions differ from the traditional fluoroscopic scanner in their mechanical design, but are capable of performing both radiography and fluoroscopy without the common limitations faced by C-arm technology. They are NeoRay Pulse, MobileRay Pulse SE and MobileRay Plus ET.

“Years ago, no one could do fluoroscopy without the C-arm because the FDA requires both arms to be aligned. You could build a system to do it but you could never get it cleared to use it because you needed this FDA regulation in place," Terry Ancar, president of PortaVision Medical, told HCB News. "Until our technology, it was impossible to get around that. Our solution electronically aligns the X-ray source and receptor without that mechanical linkage. Before this technology, it was impossible.”

The physical design of a C-arm limits the ability of clinicians to use it in certain locations, such as nursing homes, battlefields and ICUs, and prevents it from being used to scan babies in incubators, due to the need for a special X-ray specific table that allows the X-rays to penetrate it. All three systems are designed to tackle these challenges individually, with users selecting alignment settings on a workstation monitor and then monitoring the scan using a remote screen that displays live images of the patient, virtual collimator, live fluoro and the last image hold. In addition, the use of fluoroscopy enables clinicians to perform a series of procedures that can be challenging and time consuming with radiography, such as catheter placement.

NeoRay Pulse
Designed for neonatal applications, NeoRay Pulse enables babies to undergo scans while inside incubators rather than being removed from them.
“You need to take the baby out of the incubator, put it on the support, take an X-ray and then put the baby back into the incubator. The incubator acts as the mother’s womb. By scanning the little patient inside it, we eliminate the trauma that comes with taking the child out.”

MobileRay Pulse SE

MobileRay Pulse SE is a Sedecal Dragon portable upgrade designed to perform radiographic and fluoroscopic imaging on bedside patients at home, in nursing homes and even in military settings such as on the battlefield.

While conventional C-arms are usually challenging to transport to patient bedsides, the design of the MobileRay Pulse SE is made “to fold up, move and put back in the van,” according to Ancar.

MobileRay Pulse NE

Similar to its Sedecal counterpart, MobileRay Pulse ET is designed to perform radiographic and fluoroscopic imaging for bedside scanning. The Ecotron portable upgrade is designed to assess patients in hospital ICU settings.

PortaVision is currently working to obtain FDA clearance for all three and expects to begin distribution of each in 2019.

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