Ultrasound technology is considered one of the most widely used diagnostic tools in modern medicine — from radiology to emergency medicine.

But because emergency physicians use ultrasound very differently than radiologists use the imaging technology, SonoSite (Bothell, Washington) this week introduced its new S-Fast point-of-care ultrasound tool, designed specifically for the needs of emergency doctors. The company introduced the device at the American College of Emergency Physicians’(ACEP; Irving, Texas) scientific assembly in Seattle, which runs through tomorrow.

Unlike the way ultrasound is used in other medical specialties, Dave Willis, VP of innovation and competitive strategies for SonoSite, told Diagnostics & Imaging Week that emergency physicians use ultrasound to make critical on-the-spot decisions.

“Their needs are very specific,” Willis said. “We’re calling it an ultrasound tool as opposed to an ultrasound system. This is really to do procedures to make life-death decisions.”

For example, when treating a crash victim, he said, the physician might use ultrasound to determine if there is any free fluid in the abdomen and if it is safe to do surgery immediately.

To meet the needs of emergency room staff, SonoSite designed the S-Fast to boot up in 12 seconds.

“That’s critical when it can make the difference between life and death,” Willis said.

Also, because emergency rooms often staff resident physicians, especially on the night shift, Willis said the S-Fast is designed to be very user-friendly. Buttons, dials and menus have been stripped down to the essentials, the company noted, so that the doctor only has to navigate a few controls to perform a Focused Assessment with Ultrasound for Trauma (FAST) to evaluate injury to internal organs and internal bleeding, diagnose ectopic pregnancy, guide the placement of central venous catheters and intravenous lines, and perform other key emergency procedures.

Another advantage S-Fast offers emergency physicians, Willis said, is its size. The device looks similar to a flat-screen computer monitor and can be carried to the point of patient care, mounted on an IV pole, or fixed on a wall or ceiling and weighs about 8.35 lbs. Emergency doctors do not have time to push around a 400 lb machine, he noted.

So far the device has been received “extremely well” by physicians at the ACEP conference, Willis said.

He said that people walking by the company’s booth have consistently commented on the system’s dramatic difference in image quality when compared to other products on the market. “That’s the first thing people notice,” he said.

Being able to wall-mount the device is another advantage in the emergency setting, Willis said, noting that at the ACEP conference on Monday, he was told about four times that one of the biggest challenges emergency physicians experience with ultrasound equipment is that it “goes missing all the time” so that when a doctor needs the machine they can’t always find it. Because of this, “physicians like the concept of having S-Fast mounted on the wall,” he said.

Willis said that a few other ultrasound companies are selling into the emergency medicine market but that he doesn’t think any of the other ultrasound machines available are designed to boot up as quickly as the S-Fast or can withstand a 36-inch drop to a hard surface.

“Because the environment is so chaotic,” Willis said, emergency room clinicians are really hard on the equipment.

According to SonoSite, the S-Fast uses its SonoAdapt, SonoHD and SonoMB technologies for “dramatic improvements” in image quality.

To develop the S-Fast, the company said it incorporated the same processing power, image quality, and data management features of its M-Turbo system, which SonoSite also is showing at the conference this week. Then, the company said, it customized the S-Fast’s user interface, software and controls to address the immediacy needs of the emergency clinician.

SonoSite said it built the S-Fast device with Texas Instruments’(TI; Dallas) DaVinci technology, which is designed for high-performing, highly responsive digital video applications. As with the M-Turbo system, SonoSite engineers integrated Microsoft Windows Embedded CE 6.0 operating system running on TI’s TMS320DM664x digital media processor with DaVinci technology to provide a flexible solution for playback and easy image transfer, the company said.