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