GE Voluson 730 Expert

Tested with 3D/4D Ultrasound & OBGYN

Price:             Contact us for information (sorry we don’t like to put the price we paid online)

Year:              2007 Upgraded

Software:      BT08

Options:        Real Time 4D, Dicom, RT_4D_Biopsy, VOCAL II, Tomographic Ultrasound Imaging, SRI II, VCI, B-Flow, STIC, XTD View, VCAD Hear, BT Activation

From the manufacturer: (Scroll down for review)

High quality ultrasound imaging for Women’s Health.

Voluson* 730 ultrasound helps you view tiny structures with clarity, differentiate tissue types and subtle details, and detect abnormalities to enable early intervention. That’s the power of a Voluson 730 ultrasound system. It is designed specifically to provide the extraordinary vision needed in your obstetrical, gynecologic, and maternal fetal medicine studies to help you diagnose patients earlier and with increased clinical confidence.

Image clarity.

Voluson 730 features these image enhancement innovations to help you obtain excellent images:

• Speckle Reduction Imaging (SRI) helps heighten the visibility of organs and lesions with high-definition contrast resolution that suppresses speckle artifact, while maintaining true tissue architecture.
• CrossXBeam^CRI* helps enhance tissue and border differentiation with a real-time, spatial compounding acquisition and processing technique.
• HD-Flow* uses a bi-directional Doppler feature to help achieve a more sensitive vascular study and reduce overwriting.

Volume Contrast Imaging (VCI) helps you improve image quality in either a single plane or in all three planes of a volume acquisition.

http://www3.gehealthcare.com/en/Products/Categories/Ultrasound/Voluson/Voluson_730

Voluson 730 – Ultrasound – Products – gehealthcare.com

REVIEW:

As we expected, the GE Voluson 730 Expert BT08 functioned perfectly! There is no question as to why the Voluson 730 has been the staple ultrasound machine for most 3D/4D ultrasound studios for the past 6 plus years.

When we walked into the room with the Voluson 730 in it, it gave us mixed emotions. The first being, how do we give an honest review on a machine that we have grown to love over the past years, and the second being “o boy… here we go again.”

The GE Voluson 730 is beast, both in size and production value. The machine itself is large and cumbersome, it’s as though it was taken from the 1990’s. GE is has yet to do a full redesign on the actual 730 line. This leaves us, at first glance, with the feeling of using an old and outdated machine; this couldn’t be further from the truth. The GE Voluson 730 Expert BT08 has everything a child in a candy store could want.

The one item installed on this machine that makes us smile is SRI II. Yes, it greatly helps improve your 2D images, but WOW is all we can say about the 3D/4D. When you look at an image with SRI turned off and then turn it on, you will be blown away. GE has done such a great job with this.

Being that we have been using GE Voluson 730’s for over 7 years now, we had to do very little tweaking to get the images to be “perfect.” The GE has a very easy way of saving settings, as well as saving multiple setting and having them at your fingertips.

When testing this machine we had 10 different women come in. The women ranged from 15 weeks up to 35 weeks. They varied in body mass size, placenta location and racial demographics. We tried to get a good sample base so that we could test the machine on true-life situations.

We will describe the image quality based on gestation weeks.

15-20 weeks: This stage on the Voluson 730 is great! You are able to tweak the threshold and gain enough to let you see the baby in great detail. (Yes, at this stage, the baby doesn’t have much fat, but this machine helps “add” fat and layers to smooth out the baby.

20-24 weeks: The images were much better than 15-20 weeks.

25 plus weeks: This is the sweet spot for the Voluson 730 Expert. The images we got were great. Plenty of detail in the face. The downside though: it’s hard to work and fully get a placenta out of the way. If you take your time, and the baby is directly up against the placenta, you can still get some great images.

Overall 3D/4D image quality is great. You can get images from 15 plus weeks (earlier is possible, we just didn’t test it this time) After using the Voluson 730 again, we remember why we love them.

Ease of use:

Being that we have been using the Voluson 730 for years, it was very easy to use. The touch screen simplifies the process. Most everything can be changed or adjusted at either a touch of the touchscreen or a simple twist of  knob.

The machine is very forgiving. If you accidentally get into an application or change a setting, you can easily go back to your default settings.

Conclusion:

The GE Voluson 730 is a great machine, from start to finish. Do you pay a higher price for the GE name, possibly… Is it worth it, in my opinion… Under most circumstances yes. I am still a huge fan of the Voluson product line, from the original 1.07 to the pro and the expert models.

Feel Free to contact us with any questions about this machines.