Philips Medical Singapore is making the rounds at our institutions, demonstrating the latest addition to their ultrasound machines: the portable CX50.

It's built on the same engine as the legendary IU-22 (which was introduced in 2005, and still going strong!), but thanks to miniaturization technology, comes as a cart system. There's SonoCT and XRes.

The laptop sized processing engine can be detached, and taken to the wards. There's also an option to connect the CX50 to the Allura angio suite, allowing the ultrasound machine to output on the multimonitor display wall.

How did we like it?

We ran a session with the CX50 with Philips' app specialist, Rachel, and a couple of doctors the other day. The system was fast, and image quality for musculoskeletal work (done on patients in the weight range of 60-80 kg) was very good. As good as the IU? Perhaps. But the proof is in scanning the larger patient- and I found the refresh rate slower than the IU when depth was increased. That's the trade off for portability.

Here are some images from Philips Medical Singapore (thanks, Rachel!). Sure- they are for marketing purposes, but I can tell you that the quality is preetty good- approaching that of the IU22!