The University Hospital of Wales (UHW) recently purchased a Canon Aplio 500 ultrasound scanner. The system has been delivered with Canon’s Smart Fusion technology which is being used at the hospital in conjunction with ultrasound for biopsies of the prostate.
UHW is one of the first sites in the UK currently using this ‘cutting-edge’ technology in every day practice, and commenting, Dr. Luke Wheeler, Consultant Radiologist says, “Canon Medical Systems is the University Health Board’s managed equipment service (MES) partner for ultrasound. The Smart Fusion technique has a learning curve, but then the process is quite straight forward. Canon’s support has been excellent. We are the first site in Wales to have started this procedure and I know that there is interest from other centres in Wales and elsewhere in the UK. Hopefully, Smart Fusion will improve the accuracy of targeting prostate cancer, identified on the pre-biopsy MRI. Canon has always been around to advise and help me.”
Lesions within the prostate are not always that easy to see using ultrasound and therefore are not easily biopsied. They may be better seen in CT or MRI images, but biopsies within these modalities can be time-consuming and costly. Canon’s Smart Fusion reads 3D DICOM data sets from all major imaging modalities and shows the corresponding images, in real-time, adjacent to the live ultrasound display. For a comprehensive pre- and post-evaluation of the intervention, Smart Fusion permits the user to work in any ultrasound imaging mode, including colour Doppler and contrast-enhanced ultrasound.
Tim Palarm, Regional Manager Ultrasound Sales, Canon Medical Systems commented “this is a first for Wales and Canon are proud to be working with the University Health Board on a leading technology that will change the radiological clinical pathway for patients.”
Photo:
Pictured at the handover, left to right, Erica Oliver and Helen Lockyer, Ultrasound Applications Specialists, Canon Medical Systems; Dr. Luke Wheeler, Consultant Radiologist and Matthew Gallivan, Radiographic Helper (RDA)
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, delivery and average hospital energy used for the standard lifetime of the equipment as follows:
Ultrasound equates to 1 stove and 3,415 litres of water