With Dunlee moving its operations to Germany and Varex Imaging moving Varian Medical Systems and Richardson Medical into manufacturing, it appears that the X-ray tube industry has been in turmoil of late.

In June 2017, Dunlee, an X-ray and CT components company acquired by Philips in 2001, announced that it would close its generator, tube and component (GTC) plant in Aurora, Illinois. The operation will be transferred to Philips in Hamburg, Germany Existing factories mainly serve the X-ray product OEM market. According to Philips, the market for generators, tubes and component replacement has declined significantly in recent years, and they have had to promote this change. OEMs reduce product prices , the introduction of a 2nd brand and the fact that competitors have become more proactive are Dunlee's response to this change.

In July 2017, Dunlee announced that its call service center would be merged with AllParts Medical, a Philips-owned parts supplier. Sales and service representatives for its replacement business in the United States would continue to be discontinued by AllParts, which would continue to be Dunlee in this area. The leader and provider of Philips. AllParts is often the single point of contact for all Philips North American 3rd party parts processes, covering all imaging products, including ultrasound.

Dunlee sells tube business

On February 20, 2018, Philips officially announced the sale of its manufacturing facility in Aurora, Illinois to Chronos Imaging, an American medical device and medical service solution company whose main business includes third-party computed tomography (CT) replacement tubes and related assets. As part of the transaction, Chronos Imaging will continue to produce 3rd party CT replacement tubes for Philips and will continue to discontinue sales under the Dunlee brand. The agreement helps further strengthen Philips' commitment to the 3rd party AC tube business commitment and improve competitiveness in this field.

Chronos Imaging is backed by MESA European founder Rob Piconi, who formed the Pantheon Healthcare Group (now branded Althea), and Piconi is a stakeholder along with Permira. With the acquisition of TBS Group last year, expanding India and China to the once intensive In the European market, Althea is rapidly becoming one of the global leaders in the field of medical multi-supplier equipment services.

Growing OEM Market

While Dunlee intends to continue to serve and invest in the replacement tube market, the brand is increasing its focus on the growing OEM market. The future of the OEM business lies in focusing on customer needs and a deeper understanding of the various ways components are used, such as What will the strategy produce? At this year's Radiological Society of North America annual meeting, Dunlee hopes to show some "integrated disposal plans" to illustrate the point.

GE Healthcare also continues to invest in the OEM tube category. One of the company's primary goals is to improve X-ray tube life. The company is investing in new tube technology and amending existing tube lines to develop enhanced designs. With everything As the medical industry develops, customers are facing cost pressures, and trying to maximize equipment utilization, they are looking for tubes with shorter lifespans and less frequent replacement. Provides a higher return on investment in the long run.

Liquid bearing ball tube

The most important part of the X-ray tube is heat management, 99% of the energy generated by the X-ray tube is converted into heat and 1% is used for X-rays. Metal bearings and X-ray tubes with liquid bearings are designed to be more efficient Dissipates heat. However, as the metal bearing tube rotates on the ball bearing construction, this metal-to-metal contact, is one of the failure points of the ball tube throughout its life cycle.

The new technology brings a liquid bearing instead of a metal bearing, which enables fast speeds and reduces metal-to-metal contact points, so it can help us extend the life of the tube. The liquid bearing tube improves the image quality, due to the tube's Spin faster. They are also quieter, due to the lack of ball bearing metal-to-metal contact spinning noise.

GE introduced the first liquid bearing tube called the Performix Plus in 2013 and the new Performix 40 Plus liquid bearing tube in 2015 for the Revolution EVO CT.

Varex Imaging

Varian Medical Systems announced in May 2016 that it planned to spin off its imaging components business and introduce separate trajectories for the imaging business and the oncology business. The separate work was completed in January and the new company was named Varex. Varex is usually an X-ray tube, flat panel detector High-volume manufacturer of imaging components such as accelerators and high-voltage connectors, as well as imaging software and specialized accelerators.

In May, Varex released its financial results for the second quarter of fiscal 2017, its first fiscal year since inception. Revenue increased 3% to $155 million from $150 million in the prior year. In the third quarter, The company has received and placed numerous orders for components including X-ray tubes, digital detectors and high-voltage generators, which will be able to assemble hundreds of X-ray machine systems.

Varex also extended a multi-year partnership with Toshiba Medical Systems, re-established a 3-year pricing agreement for CT tubes, and estimated CT tube sales to be between $345 million and $385 million. Varian continues to develop new X-ray imaging Component technologies that can improve its R&D capabilities and shorten time-to-market, Toshiba Medical has introduced several next-generation imaging systems in the coming years.

New force in CT tube production industry

Richardson Healthcare announced its entry into X-ray tube manufacturing in August 2014. At the same time, the company also appointed Pat Fitzgerald, former president of Dunlee, as executive vice president and general manager of Richardson Healthcare. Its purpose is to provide high-end medical care to hospitals and independent services. Imaging equipment services. The difficulty in providing alternative OEM services for CT is a high quality, affordable alternative to X-ray tubes. The company acquired International Medical Equipment and Services (IMES) in 2015 to support it in providing replacement parts, services for training and technical support purposes. Subsequent investments have been focused on expanding the capabilities of the business, with replacement of CT tubes a major part of this strategy. Richardson has made significant investments in high-pressure vacuum technology specialized manufacturing and processing equipment. This includes transitions from high-temperature vacuum From furnaces to clean assembly rooms and test equipment, the company also recently launched its P3 Advantage program, which involves a parts supply agreement that gives hospitals and ISO customers ready access to interchangeable CT tubes, with deliveries expected to begin in early 2018 Its newly manufactured replacement CT tube.

Zhuhai Ruineng (Rcan) is currently the only manufacturer of CT tubes in China that can develop, manufacture and manufacture CT tubes. Since the birth of the first domestic CT tube with complete independent cultural property rights in 2013, it has completed 3.5MHU and 4.0MHU heat capacity CT tubes successively. Independent development and mass production of the tube (a total of 4 medical device registration certificates have been obtained). At the end of 2016, the national ten 25" 5.2M large-capacity CT tube" new product was released, and the plan was 2020 National ten 35" 8.0M high-capacity CT tube "Key R&D solution products are launched, and the core components of China's medical imaging equipment are still in a serious backward state compared with foreign brands, and this situation has not changed in the past. This is one of the development bottlenecks for China to become a major CT manufacturing country in the future. The production of domestic CT tubes has been a long wait for medical imaging equipment practitioners. Zhuhai Ruineng is the first company to experience product development and design, product registration, batch trial production, application evaluation, product improvement and product life cycle process. Product development from DR tube, breast Tubes, small CT tubes are self-sufficient, and the long accumulation of innovation has controlled the central technology of CT tubes, forming a complete set of technical methods for R&D and manufacturing, and now has 16 patents of various types. At the same time, it also cooperates with well-known domestic and foreign universities. , Medical institutions, inspection and testing institutions, complete machine consumers and other professional institutions have established a stable industry-university-research medical inspection cooperation alliance. Invented a historic breakthrough in CT tube "Made in China", breaking through the pattern of CT tube's foreign monopoly.