Canon’s Aquilion Next Generation Aquilion ONE CT system was recently installed at Stoke Mandeville Hospital, part of Buckinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust. The new equipment replaced an existing 16-slice scanner and will provide cardiac patients with cutting-edge equipment on their doorsteps. It means that people in Buckinghamshire who would previously have had to travel out of the county for this kind of CT imaging can now come straight to Stoke Mandeville.
Designed to cater for the most specialised CT departments, the new system will enable the hospital to start a world-class cardiac service. It comes with Canon’s PUREVision detector which provides unparalleled image resolution and dose savings. In addition, the high speed gantry has a 78cm aperture to accommodate all patients, including bariatric and patients with high heart rates.
The new system performs coronary angiography using a single rotation axial scan. This not only ensures uniformity in the Z-axis. But the short scan time also reduces the need for contrast. With SURECardio Prospective even patients with arrhythmia can be successfully scanned while the patient dose is maintained as low as possible.
A major advantage of the 320-slice CT scanner includes minimal radiation dose. Optimal imaging quality is produced at the lowest possible dose. Ultra helical scanning capabilities reduce the scanning time to seconds, minimising the length of time patients are required to hold their breath and overall examination times. The exceptional 4D diagnostic imaging can record a moment in time, or over multiple moments, to image dynamic blood flow or the mechanics of joint movement.
The system at Stoke Mandeville has also been equipped with Canon’s
SEMAR (Single-Energy Metal Artefact Reduction) technology. This innovative software employs a sophisticated reconstruction algorithm to eliminate artefacts caused by metallic implants, while improving visualisation of the implant, its supporting bone and adjacent soft tissues for an accurate diagnosis.
Photo:
Shown here (left to right) Simon Weeden, Branch Manager, Canon Medical Systems; Tessa Sanderson, CBE, and Andrew Wainwright, Radiology Operational Manager
Canon Medical Systems has a carbon-zero project in place. We have calculated the carbon footprint for each of our products to include manufacturing, shipping and delivery and average hospital energy used for the standard lifetime of the equipment as follows: CT equates to 12 stoves and 48,365 litres of water