Building works required for a new PET-CT scanner and improved patient areas at Paul Strickland Scanner Centre are progressing rapidly.
Building works required for a new PET-CT scanner and improved patient areas at Paul Strickland Scanner Centre are progressing rapidly.
The works form part of what is probably the biggest upgrade in the centre’s history and follows installation of two MRI scanners. It is expected the building work will last into 2023.
“It’s a very exciting project—you don’t often see such significant upgrades,” says Bruno Ferreira, our Superintendent for PET-CT. As in the case of our MRI upgrade, the work will improve patient comfort and allow us to scan more patients than before, even though the new Siemens Biograph Vision 600 PET-CT scanner is replacing our two existing scanners. Just like the new MRI scanners, the new PET-CT scanner will be faster, produce higher definition images and feature very advanced artificial intelligence software. This will aid cancer diagnosis and monitoring.
Having just one PET-CT scanner instead of two will free up a significant amount of space, which will be used to construct new cannulation and uptake bays—clinical areas where patients are injected with radiopharmaceutical agent before their scan and wait for it to be dispersed through their body.
It is expected the new uptake bays will improve patient comfort, privacy and radiation shielding. Mr Ferreira said: “This is a huge project but will be rewarding when it has been completed.”
