Tuesday saw our first EU Researcher’s Forum held in Munchen, Germany. Spawned from a smaller UK Researcher’s Forum last year, we thought we would expand the group to all of Europe; it proved to be very successful, with 30 persons attending. Company-wise, we premiered the new SonixDAQ parallel channel acquisition device, and also demonstrated the novel SonixGPS system for freehand needle guidance. Five great presentations were made from researcher’s using our systems, all covering different and unique topics.

As we enter in our 10th year of operation, it is nice to reflect back and see how we’ve grown. A recent photograph shows the team that started in 2000/2001, some of us with more hair, some of us with less, but still the same great group.

Our lovely and cheerful Lisa Chow from our North American office will be taking a month away from work here at Ultrasonix so that she can be a part of the 2010 winter olympics. Lisa, according to a recent email, is “ready to put [her] blood, sweat, tears, and passion into the games” starting February 3rd.

On behalf of everyone in the Richmond Office i’d like to thank (from left to right) Serpil, Kelly, Frances, Li Wei, Lisa, Jimmy, Roderick and Anna (the only one missing on the picture!…) for a great event in Grouse Mountain…. Ziplining was fun trying and I think everyone really enjoyed the evening as well…

 

We would like to congratulate Reza Zahiri-Azar on successfully defending his Ph.D this week. Reza is a graduate of the University of British Columbia and a part-time employee of Ultrasonix.

He is also the inventor of the real-time elastography mode used on the Sonix systems.

We hope he won’t make us address him as Dr. in the office from now on Congrats!

We are pleased to announce the winner of the 1st annual Ultrasonix Student Award. This award is given to the university student who makes the largest impact on the Ultrasonix research community through their:

The engineering team here at Ultrasonix is focused on delivering reliable and durable products to market. One tool we use to determine possible issues is to run a series of tests on a vibration table to simulate real world transport and daily use conditions. We applied random vibration and shock loading to the Sonix Touch system to see how it would perform. Check out the video showing the Sonix Touch on the Vibration Table.

SonixGPS was the most talked about product on the show floor of this years ASA. Several luminaries joked that they were no longer necessary to teach needle guidance and one doctor said it was the greatest addition to ultrasound in 20 years.

The most respected luminaries from every corner of the world came and played with SonixTOUCH and SonixGPS. Almost all of them had an “Ah Ha” moment once they saw the needle come out exactly where the “X” was on the screen.

Ultrasonix recently attended the IEEE Ultrasonics conference in Rome with great success. We showcased the SonixTOUCH Research platform and had excellent feedback. Not only did we meet with new faces, but also got to reconnect with dozens of customers who are using various Ultrasonix research systems.

A few highlights:

ACEP was an outstanding show for Ultrasonix…. We are investing more heavily and with more focus to address our key markets – Emergency Medicine is one of our primary target markets and we elected to support this event significantly this year. Our presence was well noticed as our footprint was larger than most other Ultrasound Companies. You can tell this year the larger medical companies have cut marketing budgets and their presence was much reduced compared to last year – which gives us more visibility.