Castle Hill Hospital, part of Hull and East Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust, has recently opened The Jack Brignall Scanning Centre.
The facility is the first in the UK to be fitted with a Biograph mCT Flow EdgeTM PET·CT system from Siemens Healthcare, which has been funded by Hull-based charity, The Daisy Appeal.
Opened by former Secretary of State for Health, Baroness Virginia Bottomley, the system is being used to conduct mostly oncological work in addition to infection scanning, vasculitis and clinical research.
Since implementation of the new technology, Castle Hill Hospital has seen a rapid increase in referrals for PET·CT examinations. Replacing a mobile scanner that would visit the trust three days a week, the new system is in action five days a week and currently imaging up to 50 patients within that time. The Biograph mCT Flow Edge will be used as an essential tool in radiation treatment planning and it is anticipated its use will be extended to dementia and cardiac imaging, two of the most-prevalent disease areas in the UK.
“The Biograph mCT Flow Edge was chosen as the hospital was looking for a state-of-the-art system to conduct clinical work and high-end clinical and translational research,” said Dr Ged Avery, consultant tadiologist at Castle Hill Hospital.
“As a result of the technology, clinicians are benefitting from improved image quality and patients are receiving a reduced dose and faster service. It is considered that in the near future this will have a positive effect on reducing patient bed times and increasing throughput.”
The system overcomes the limitations of conventional bed-based PET·CT with FlowMotion, an innovative new technology that moves the patient smoothly through the system’s gantry, while continuously acquiring PET data. FlowMotion also expands accurate and reproducible quantification in all dimensions for precise disease characterisation in therapy monitoring, while enabling clinicians to offer as low as reasonably achievable (ALARA) dose to every patient.
Neil Lincoln, Northern sales manager at Siemens Healthcare, said: "The system is providing vital support to the growing number of patients who can benefit from a PET·CT examination in the North East region. The system’s FlowMotion anatomy-based scanning approach helps enable clinicians to make a more confident diagnosis due to the high-quality images produced, as well as accurate and reproducible quantification for treatment planning and monitoring.”
The new PET-CT scanner is being operated by Alliance Medical.
- Companies:
- Siemens
- Alliance Medical Ltd
- Castle Hill Hospital
- Hull University Teaching Hospitals
