Medical X-Ray
Liquid Cooling Systems for Efficient Temperature Control of Medical Diagnostics
One critical element of today’s diagnostic equipment is its cooling system. The cooling system prevents overheating, which can cause equipment to malfunction. Additionally, cooling solutions help maintain thermal stability of lab instrumentation, which is necessary for high-quality results. Considering the importance of medical imaging and diagnostic tests to monitor and maintain patients’ health, the equipment and the lab must be thermally maintained to ensure equipment consistently meets stated performance expectations.
Thermal Management for Medical Applications
Laird Thermal Systems offers a broad range of thermal management solutions for the medical industry to address bulk heat removal of x-ray imaging systems, precise temperature control of detectors and refrigeration of medical diagnostic chambers.
This brochure provides an overview of applications and products suitable for this market.
Radiation Therapy (RT)
Radiation damages the DNA in malignant tissue, which prevents the cell’s ability to repair itself or reproduce.
A linear accelerator, or LINAC is used to produce and deliver the radiation beam to the targeted area through a complex system. As the X-ray tube in this system is very powerful it also has high heat load requirements, ranging up to 25 kilowatts. Temperature control of devices within the system is required to optimize radiation beam and destroy as few healthy cells as possible.
Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI)
Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is a medical imaging technique that uses a magnetic field and computer-generated radio waves to create detailed images of the organs and tissues in the body. It is used for detecting brain tumors, traumatic brain injury, infections, stroke, dementia and root causes of headache.
Cardiovascular Medical Imaging (CV)
Often referred to as “Interventional Imaging,” CV technology creates continuous, real time x-ray images of the movement of a body part, instrument or contrast agent. It is used for imaging during surgical, orthopedic and emergency care procedures such as catheter insertion, placement of stents and angiograms.
Positron Emission Tomography (PET)
PET scanning is a gamma-based imaging technique that allows doctors to detect early signs of cancer, brain disorders and heart diseases by identifying changes in organs and tissues at cellular level. In a PET scan, the patient is injected with a radioactive substance and placed on a flat table that moves into a donut-shaped housing called gantry.
Computerized Tomography (CT)
In computed tomography (CT) X-Ray systems, the tube and detector are rotating at very high speeds around the body during examination to produce a 3D image.
Thermal management of both the x-ray tube and detector is required to detecting and diagnosing injuries and diseases. Due to the high g-force environment, system reliability is critical. Laird Thermal Systems’ cooling solutions can spin around the patient up to five times a second, creating rotational forces up to 70 G's without impacting system operation.
Cooling Medical X-ray Imaging Equipment
Introduction
Designed to take pictures inside a patient’s body, medical X-ray imaging systems are a vital piece of detection equipment. Medical X-ray imaging equipment can be used to detect and diagnose a wide range of injuries or diseases. In X-ray-based imaging techniques, an X-ray beam is projected through a patient to a recording medium. The generation and projection of an X-ray beam is highly inefficient and produces a large amount of waste heat. The heat load can be as much as 5KW.