Technology

KG Hospital Installs 128-Slice CT Scanner

The Hopsital claims it to be Asia's first 128 slice CT scanner

KG Hospital, Coimbatore, has installed the world's fastest and Asia's first 128-Slice CT Scanner, which provides twice the imaging power at half the radiation. The new scanner has the ability to produce complete three-dimensional images of a beating heart within eight seconds. This Somatom Definition AS+ 128-slice CT scanner has the widest bore and the highest weight limit for the table, so as to accommodate the patients better. "We are amazed at the speed available with this CTG scanner, giving our doctors images in half the time of older scanners while using special software that automatically reduces radiation to the lowest possible dose to patients," reacted Chairman Dr G Bakthavathsalam.

The images produced are spectacular and offers greatest benefit to heart patients. Not only it allows to look at the vessels as you would normally picture a vessel, but also the doctor can look at it in any planes. "We can see them three-dimensionally and rotate them in any direction and depict it as it is in the body and really be able to look at this from all sides and make the right diagnosis," says Bakthavathsalam. The three-dimensional look of a heart produces 5,000 to 10,000 images that are compiled on a computer, a work station and those images can be cycled throughout. Computerised tomography (CT) takes a series of cross-sectional images one slice at a time in a full circle rotation. A computer then converts those X-rays into a picture. The 128-Slice CT has been called revolutionary because it uses two sources instead of one to take the images and hence it cuts the time in half. It can literally freeze a heart in motion, so that patients undergoing cardiac scans no longer have to take beta blockers to slow down the heart's motion. When it comes to heart care, KG Hospital's programme has achieved exceptional results and now state-of-the-art technology available only at a few places in the globe, is giving doctors an amazing new tool for diagnosing and treating the heart. "With this new technology, we can actually modulate or change the dose to the patient during the cardiac cycle. So phases in the cardiac cycle where we are more likely to be able to visualise the coronary arteries, we give a larger dose and parts in the cycle where the coronary arteries are usually not visualised, the dose is lowered," says Dr Bakthavathsalam.

EH News Bureau