Description

The Siui Apogee 1000 Lite is the perfect solution for the small animal practice, private clinic, mobile vet, or for moving between satellite branches. Slim and lightweight, it houses the very latest technology and is now also available to buy as the upgrade option of our NEW Ultrasound Starter Kit!

• 15″ LCD tilting monitor
• Detachable battery – up to 2 hours of mobile scanning time
• Splash proof

Linear and microconvex probe for very small animal pregnancy scanning

The above scan was performed on a very small animal (guinea pig) – one of the greatest challenges for any ultrasound scanner. Of course, the linear probe – designed for superficial work – performs spectacularly, but even the microconvex performs very well despite the pregnancy being right into the near field (only 1cm in depth).

Large convex probe:

Linear probe:

This thyroid scan below may not look very interesting, but actually, it tells you a lot. Look how the colour coding is confined so precisely to the vessels. Siui have got their filters and 2D/colour coding sensitivity absolutely spot on with this model:

Remember that any given pixel can be coded in greyscale as tissue, or coded in colour if flow is detected. To make matters more complicated, tissue can also move (the pulsatile nature of arteries, or the contraction of the myocardium, for example), so the scanner has to also filter out high amplitude movements and be sure not to code these as blood flow. This is why so many systems struggle with colour flow, erroneously coding the pixels of surrounding tissue as colour. Again, the Apogee 1000 Lite gets it absolutely right.

Pulsed Wave Doppler:

Basic echocardiography:

The below clip was taken using the microconvex probe.

This demonstrates that cardiac screening can easily be performed with the high resolution microconvex probe, including:

• Measurement of cardiac wall thickness and chamber diameters
• LA/Ao ratio
• Visual assessment of contractility and/or calculation of fractional shortening or ejection fraction
• Simple pulsed wave Doppler assessments (mitral inflow, aortic outflow, pulmonary outflow)

If you are looking to perform advanced echocardiography, we suggest the Apogee 2300.

Our thoughts on Siui’s latest offering

The brand new Apogee 1000 Lite is pitched as an entry-level colour Doppler machine by Siui, meant to offer an alternative to those who need the high resolution image quality of the Apogee 2300, but do not necessarily need a machine that they can push to the limits in advanced applications such as echocardiography. Indeed, despite being available with a phased array probe and many advanced cardiac quantification methods (such as automated Simpson’s biplane, and PISA for quantifying mitral regurgitation), my personal opinion is that the 1000 Lite is not suited for veterinarians scanning at this level of proficiency.

Colour Doppler, in particular, has been a huge disappointment to many in the veterinary world. Lower end systems can suffer from a lot of noise and colour bleed, even for abdominal work. For cardiac, it’s even worse – with the technology originally optimised for human scanning, few ultrasound systems are capable of really delivering the kind of frame rates we need for the typical heart rates of small animals. The Apogee 2300 manages to deliver on this promise for well under the usual price associated with a high end cardiac machine, and far better than many of its competitor systems. This isn’t the kind of territory that I believe the Lite 1000 should attempt to step into.

The Apogee 1000 Lite’s real strength is its abdominal and small parts imaging. It uses the same transducer technology of Siui’s higher end offering, and this is evident in the clarity of the images it delivers. Colour Doppler on the microconvex, convex or linear probes is also excellent – high sensitivity and none of the typical problems of colour bleed that are so common with portable ultrasound systems. For these reasons, despite its ‘entry level’ pricing, I would consider this to be comfortably into the realms of a mid-range scanner – and, depending on application, it challenges some of the higher end machines, giving the Sonoscape E3, Mindray and Edan range a run for their money, at a fraction of the price.

For pregnancy scanning, this machine delivers breath-taking image quality. Its portability means that we have been able to stress-test it in a number of different environments: on dogs, cats, guinea pigs, rabbits, snakes, sheep and goats. It has no problems meeting the unique demands of each type of pregnancy. For the clinic environment, it is worth noting that the Apogee 1000 Lite does not have an HDMI port, so cannot be connected up to a larger screen. For this, we would again recommend the Apogee 2300.

Looking to lease this ultrasound machine?

If you have a Ltd company, leasing versus buying outright could cost your business as little as £66 + VAT per year over a three year term. Contact us if you would like to apply for leasing.