Refurbished C-Arm for Radiography Programs: How Riverland Got a Full Lab Upgrade for Under $300K
For radiography program directors working with fixed grant budgets, equipment decisions aren’t just about quality. They’re about making every dollar count without compromising what students learn or how prepared they are when they step into a clinical environment.
Vicki Kintop, radiography program director at Riverland Community College in Austin, Minnesota, knows that reality well. When it was time to upgrade their lab, she had a hard ceiling and a clear mission: get students on equipment that actually matches what they’ll find at clinical sites.
Through a partnership with Brown’s Medical Imaging (BMI), she did exactly that.
The Problem: Equipment That Barely Worked
Before the upgrade, Riverland’s C-arm situation was, in Kintop’s words, not good. The locks didn’t work. It barely turned on. It was old enough that it had no practical connection to what students would encounter in the field.
For a program built around workforce readiness, that gap wasn’t just an inconvenience. It was a barrier.
The Solution: A Refurbished GE C-Arm That Feels Brand New
Through BMI, Riverland acquired a fully reconditioned GE C-arm that Kintop describes as feeling brand new. More importantly, it’s the exact model currently in use at many of their clinical partner sites.
That detail matters more than it might seem. Because the equipment is recent enough that clinical sites haven’t yet upgraded, students arrive already fluent on the system they’ll be using from day one.
“They know exactly what to use and how to operate it when they go out to our clinical partners,” Kintop said, “because it’s new enough that they haven’t upgraded yet at our clinical sites.”
Staying Within Budget Without Sacrificing Quality
Kintop came to BMI with a fixed number. Grant funding from industry partners set a hard limit on what the program could spend. BMI’s job was to find the right equipment in the right age window, current enough to matter, affordable enough to fit.
They delivered. Riverland walked away with a refurbished C-arm, a portable X-ray machine, and a complete new digital lab, all for under $300,000.
“We could spend $300,000 on just one of those things,” Kintop said.
That kind of value doesn’t happen by accident. It’s the result of working with a partner who understands how educational budgets work and structures solutions accordingly.
The Right Age Window Makes All the Difference
One of the most important factors in choosing refurbished radiology training equipment is finding the right age window. Too old and the equipment is irrelevant to clinical environments. Too new and the cost climbs beyond what most programs can absorb.
BMI identified equipment that hit the sweet spot: modern enough to reflect what clinical sites are actually using, affordable enough to fit within grant funding constraints, and reliable enough to support daily student training.
For programs evaluating refurbished options, that balance is exactly what to look for.