A large regional hospital in upstate New York needed to protect mission-critical equipment and processes. The hospital outlined a number of challenges it faced in its efforts to preserve and protect its medical imaging equipment and, more importantly, the integrity of the resulting medical images.

Medical imaging equipment is, by nature, sensitive equipment. For one, it requires a sizeable inrush of high-impulse currents during use. At the same time, the voltage feeding must be controlled within very narrow specifications (typically 2% of connected line voltage during peak inrush) in order to keep the high voltage components functioning properly. Last, but not least, medical imaging equipment must be noise-free (less than 0.5 volts neutral to ground) and disruption-free during utility voltage sags to avoid impacting image quality and patient diagnosis.

Solution

An electronic voltage regulator/power conditioners provides the hospital with the broadest range of protection against voltage fluctuations, as well as the proper overload capacity for its inrush-current requirements. At the same time, it provides consistent voltage regulation and fast correction without maintenance or moving parts.The EVR is not only providing the facility’s imaging equipment with reliable voltage regulation, it’s also eliminating the noise artifacts that can wreak havoc on medical images and the critical patient diagnoses made from those images. The EVR is prolonging the hospital’s imaging equipment life and reducing machine downtime, as well, ensuring that the hospital’s equipment is running at all times to keep pace with the hospital’s heavy scheduling requirements.

Results

The hospital has had zero power-quality issues since installing the EVR. That has made a very positive impression on both the facilities and imaging staffs.