Monthly Archives: September 2018

The Hospital of St. John & St. Elizabeth, one of the UK’s leading charitable independent hospitals, recently acquired a Canon Medical Systems Aquilion ONE Genesis CT scanner. The hospital, founded in 1856 under the care of the Sisters of Mercy, an order of nuns who worked with Florence Nightingale in the Crimean War, pioneered the use of advanced nursing techniques to help the sick, dying and needy.  Now based in St. John’s Wood, London, profits are used to fund the on-site hospice, which offers free care to over 4,000 patients and their families every year.

Shila Mistry, the Radiology Service Manager for the hospital comments, “The new Aquilion ONE Genesis CT scanner has very significantly lowered our doses. The radiologists and our referrers are delighted with the image quality and we have had a lot of very positive feedback from the cardiologists.The ability to scan the whole heart in a single rotation, using the wide area detector at low dose, has revolutionised our cardiac service and significantly increased the patient throughput. The dual energy on the scanner is excellent and very-user friendly. Working with Canon as our technology provider was new to us, but we are delighted to be working in partnership with Canon and are very happy with the service and after sales support the company provides””.

The Aquilion ONE Genesis maximises the patient experience during a CT examination and, through intelligent exam protocols, provides excellent image quality with low radiation and contrast dose, tailored to each patient. The scanner, which is smaller and lighter and requires less power than any other premium CT systems, offers a suite of adaptive diagnostic solutions to make complex exams easier and to improve diagnostic precision and reproducibility.

Photo line up left to right: Jamile Siddiqui, Account Manager, Canon Medical Systems; Karen Lucas, Lead Cross-sectional Radiographer; Shila Mistry, Radiology Services Manager, and Karina Box, Senior Radiographer

The Beacon Centre at Musgrove Park Hospital, part of the Taunton and Somerset NHS Foundation Trust recently replaced its single CT simulator with a Canon Medical Systems Aquilion LB CT scanner.   The Beacon Centre offers a radiotherapy service in the Somerset area and treats up to 1700 patients per year. The new equipment, which has been delivered with a Varian respiratory gating system, will assist the Trust in meeting its goals to expand the functionality and performance of the Centre, particularly with reference to an increasing 4D RT workload. In addition to its main employment in radiotherapy planning, the new scanner will also be used for diagnostic scanning to provide the Radiology Department with extra capacity.

Victoria Rata, Radiotherapy Advanced Practitioner and Pre-treatment Team Lead at The Beacon Centre comments, “After a very rigorous evaluation process, we chose Canon Medical Systems to supply our new radiotherapy CT scanner. We are extremely privileged to have had the CT scanner funded by our charity, Somerset Unit for Radiotherapy Equipment (SURE – http://www.surecharity.org.uk).The incredible work of their fundraisers and supporters helps us to give cutting-edge cancer treatment to the people of Somerset.”  Victoria continues, “Our newly renovated CT suite makes the environment more pleasant and less anxiety-provoking for our patients, contributing to a more positive patient experience, as well as more efficient workflow processes for staff.  We chose to work with Canon as they offered a very friendly, customer-focused approach. This has been consistent throughout all our interactions, including their applications training, which was tailored to meet our needs and enables us to provide the best service to our patients”. Concluding, Victoria says, “In terms of technical specification, the Aquilion LB scanner has the largest bore currently available on the market and, as such, allows us a great deal of freedom when it comes to patient positioning, meaning we can enhance accuracy, but also patient comfort”.

The Aquilion LB, designed with oncology in mind, has the largest CT gantry aperture – 90 cm, available on any CT system. The large bore size removes historic restrictions, making it easy for accurate patient positioning and offering maximum flexibility for treatment planning. It comes with Canon’s latest dose saving software, including AIDR 3D Adaptive Iterative Dose Reduction, and dramatically improves planning where metal is present using SEMAR – Single Energy Metal Artefact Reduction – software.

Photo line up left to right: Elinor Barker and Marcus Oakes Senior Radiotherapy Radiographers; Graham Martin, Canon Applications Specialist and Megan Newberry, Canon Account Manager; Victoria Rata, Radiotherapy Advanced Practitioner’ Megan Reeve, Radiotherapy Radiographer and Stuart McGrail, Operations Manager