News

The bigger picture: new acute imaging centre for St Mary's - 12 November 2009

Thousands of patients will benefit from rapid diagnostics with the opening of a £4m acute imaging centre. 

Based close to A&E in St Mary’s, the new facility will house a state-of-the-art GE 3-tesla magnetic resonance (MR) scanner - the first in Europe - and a 256-slice computed tomography (CT) scanner - the first in the UK. 

Bruno Tonello, imaging services manager, said: “With our new hi-tech imaging centre we’ll be able to answer most diagnostic questions for our patients, allowing clinicians to plan their treatment more effectively. 

“The centre will perfectly meet the needs of critically ill patients who urgently require diagnostic scanning.” 

It will also support new trauma services planned for St Mary’s next year and increase the number of patients the Trust is able to scan. 

Bruno continued: “The speed and image quality of both machines means we can scan an increasing number of patients non-invasively. For example in vascular imaging we’ll be able to assess more patients on an outpatient basis, avoiding the need for invasive procedures like angiograms where patients’ blood vessels are injected with contrast agents and then X-rayed.” 

Previously patients’ bodies needed to be scanned in increments. Now whole areas can be scanned at once. 

And the new CT scanner can look in more detail at perfusion – the rate blood is pumped through the brain and solid organs – allowing more accurate and timely diagnosis of conditions such as stroke, cancer and infection.

ENDS
For more information please contact:
Caroline Weller
Telephone: 020 3312 1331
Email: caroline.weller@imperial.nhs.uk