Intermittent severe image ghosting and/or SPT FSE and FGRE Stability Failures or Missing Images May Be Due To GP3.

Intermittent severe image ghosting and/or SPT FSE and FGRE Stability Failures or Missing Images May Be Due To GP3 See Long Description and Attachment. See the Resolution Concept for the complete SMILe released 02/16/2007 (updated 02/22/07). GE Healthcare SMILe's and Service Notes are copyright (c) to General Electric Company Inc with all rights reserved. SMILe's and Service Notes issued by GE Healthcare are proprietary to GE Healthcare. Disclosure to persons not employed by GE Healthcare or not in possession of a Advanced Service Agreement with GE Healthcare is prohibited. Subject: Updated - Intermittent severe image ghosting and/or SPT FSE and FGRE Stability Failures or Missing Images May Be Due To GP3. Effectivity: All Signa 1.5T and 3.0T HD (12.0) and HDx (14.0) MR Systems. Problem: Customer may report intermittent severe image ghosting on all sequences. SPT FSE and FGRE Head and Body off-isocenter constant phase and time domain echo shift plots may exhibit severe failures. Iso-center constant phase plots will be fairly flat and not failing. FSE magnitude stability plot will exhibit accumulating noise in every location. See example attachment of one set of bad SPT FSE and FGRE Head stability plots. Customer could also report no images after a scan or constant auto or manual prescan failures. Performing a TPS Reset will resolve problem. While in failing condition performing a TPS Reset and directly rerunning scan or SPT will result in passing results until next 1 to 20 TPS Resets. The ghosting and stability failures are the result of the inability of software to account for normal part-to-part timing variation of an FPGA chip inside the GP3 Module (FRU part # 2331400-2) used in HFD and HFD-S Cabinets (gradient). This results in digital glitches which corrupt the gradient amplifier waveform or, in some cases, results in no waveform output. This is NOT a hardware problem. Not all GP3 Modules will cause the problem. See the Attachment and also see the Resolution concept for the complete SMILe released 2/16/2007 (updated 02/22/07)