Royal North Shore Hospital (RNSH) has said goodbye to it’s computerized tomography (CT) and positron emission tomography (PET) scanner after 13 years of service and has said hello to a new state-of-the-art scanner.
The old machinery has had good innings since it was opened in March 2010 by the then prime minister Kevin Rudd. It has worked hard for the hospital with almost 50,000 scans under its belt, performed mostly on cancer patients.
The new scanner is a Siemens Quadra total-body PET/CT, which will be operational from mid-June and is only one of 15 similar scanners globally.
Director Nuclear Medicine at RNSH Associate Professor Paul Roach said the scanner will reduce radiation and operate a lot faster.
“We’re going to be able to reduce the radiation dose to about half of what we currently do,” he said.
The new scanner is a joint project between RNSH and the University of Sydney as part of a $15 million national project to boost Australia’s PET/CT research ability.
Professor Roach said that the scanner will not only be beneficial to locals but also to national research.
