Reviews of the GE Healthcare GE VScan Air | Which Medical Device

 This is  the latest in GEs foray into portable ultrasound machines. The VscanAir is a truly pocket sized machine and I suspect primarily aimed at the non radiologist market.

Features:

• Double ended with curvilinear probe and linear probe
• Wireless rechargeable
• Wireless connection to android or apple devices
• Variety of inbuilt imaging presets for each probe
• Colour Doppler imaging

 In use:

Setup is easy. Download the software for your device from the play store or apple store. Register the probe with the software and off you go. Select which ‘probe’ you are using labelled ‘Deep curved’ or ‘Superficial linear’.

Deep gives you the option of the following presets:

Abdominal, cardiac, Ob/Gyn, vascular, MSK and lung

Superficial gives the following presets:

Vascular, MSK, nerves, lung, small parts, opthalmic and neo head

The probe is not too heavy and doesn’t feel cumbersome. It has the huge advantage over some competitors of being wireless meaning your phone/tablet can be placed on an adjacent table/stand or be hand held without being tethered to the probe by a small connector that could easily become dislodged. Importantly I could not discern any lag in the image. I have used a siemens hand held scanner with one of our IR rooms (Siemens Artis Pheno) and the lag made it unusable in my opinion.

Images can be frozen, measurements taken and images saved to your device.

Image quality is clearly not up to the standard of high end cart based machines, but is certainly very usable. You can see real world some comparisons here. Doppler imaging was also sensitive and very usable. Battery life is 50 minutes of continuous scanning, long enough for quite a few scans! Its easily charged with wireless charging and works on any standard wireless phone charger.

I can see this machine being of real use (in trained hands of course!) in the ER, looking for full bladders, free fluid, pleural effusions etc. Similarly in a ward based setting. You can also see that it can be used for basic interventional procedures and possibly more demanding IR applications.  

We are really keen to get our hands on its successor in the near future!

Dr Phil Haslam

Consultant Interventional and Uroradiologist