Vscan Air Wireless Ultrasound 17+

Vscan Air Review

Over all I am very happy with the device and app. The Vscan clarity is very good considering the price, especially with the linear probe for MSK use. The app is very functional but is lacking some key features such as being able to annotate images. You can neither label images nor write notes within an exam. This is greatly problematic when reviewing past exams or noting pathology found. I hope the GE team will add this soon as this function is available with competing App based handheld ultrasound machines. I find this unacceptable from a company with such a great name and reputation and hope this is rectified. The only other problem I have experienced is the signal cuts out intermittently for no rhyme or reason. It does this at least 1 or 2 times during every exam but is very transient. I can see the image freeze briefly then 2 seconds later can see the “low signal” graphic in the top left corner appear and then return to the typical full bars graphic. One time I was doing an ultrasound guided knee injection and the signal was dropping so frequently that it was difficult to do the procedure.

Great device. App is work in progress.

The Vscan Air device is one of the best if not the best handheld ultrasound probes currently out there. It has a great form factor that makes carrying it around and scanning easy and comfortable. The ability to scan deep as well as superficial with the same probe thanks to a low frequency curvilinear array as well as a higher frequency linear one on the opposite side is one of its biggest pros. The device is fully sealed and hence waterproof making cleaning and disinfection as well as water-immersion scanning a breeze. Wireless charging and connection via WiFi make this device truly wireless.

The app on the other hand is not well thought of, especially considering the power of GE Healthcares amazing R&D is behind it. Considering that the device is capable of scanning with B-mode and C-mode, it is odd that M-mode is not available on the app, nor is Power Doppler. Both these modes are in my view essential for a designated PoCUS device and require a software-only upgrade as the probe should be fully capable of generating the information needed. Moreover, although meant to be simple to use, its more advanced applications are limited by its lack of appropriate virtual “knobs”. Currently the app is preset based and in my opinion many of the presets are suboptimal for their intended application: for example, in many cases the vascular preset may be more suitable for nerve blocks than the nerve preset. The app currently allows tweaking of depth and gain/time-gain compensation during scanning. Focus depth, Doppler windowing and frequency — even as a simple resolution/general/depth setting — should be made available. The inability to adequately annotate or label during scanning is lacking. Although great for most applications, cardiac scanning is inferior when comparing to other available handheld probes that use a curvilinear array to create a virtual phased array image. The scanning frame rate is deficient making it difficult to capture good images throughout

the cardiac cycle, especially when using colour Doppler. As previously mentioned, the lack of M-mode makes it impossible to make simple measurements of cardiac function such as MAPSE/TAPSE/EPSS.

Hopefully this review will need an update soon to retract some of the comments regarding missing features and I look forward to testing them out and keep scanning with this amazing device.

Developer Response ,

Hello,
This is helpful feedback. Thanks so much for sharing with us. We've passed your suggestions to the team for further review. Thanks again, and have a great day!

V scan air review

After using this device for about 3 months I find the image quality very grainy as compared to the traditional wall plugged USG machine. The Bluetooth I think degrades quality of image quite a bit…

I have tried changing settings from MSK to nerve to whatever, depth, brightness etc tried changing that

Tried it is healthy adults but even finding median nerve could be a struggle as compared to MRI like pictures of traditional USG…

Ofcourse they did send in a demo machine to try before I bought the actual probe. May be I should have used demo machine more before ordering…

Prajakta Avhad MD