London clinic invests in early detection of coronary disease
17 April 2008
The Clinical Imaging and Research Centre based at The Wellington
Hospital in north London, a leading private hospital for cardiac care,
has installed a Somatom Definition Dual Source CT, Symbia T6 Spect CT
and ultrasound scanners from Siemens in its multipurpose cardiac imaging
and research centre.
Siemens delivered a turnkey solution by accommodating the Somatom
Definition CT scanner and Symbia T6 in adjacent rooms so that they can
work simultaneously and patients can be transferred easily from one
scanner to the other. By bringing together nuclear medicine and CT
imaging, co-localised physiological images of the patient anatomy are
generated, which improves the diagnostic quality of nuclear medicine
procedures.
The Somatom Definition Dual-Source CT scanner has a true temporal
resolution of 83 milliseconds, allowing the system to image the most
clinically challenging cardiac patients without beta blockers and
independent of the heart rate. The systems will expand the current CT
and nuclear medicine service delivery including dual energy CT on the
Somatom Definition and general nuclear medicine on the Symbia T6.

Dr Shree Venuraju,
Cardiology Research Registrar; Stanley Muscat, Imaging Manager;
and Vince Golledge, Siemens Regional Sales Manager with the
SOMATOM Definition
Dual Source CT
at the Wellington Hospital
The Clinical Imaging and Research Centre and British Cardiac Research
Trust (BCRT) has invested in the latest technology to assist its
cardiologists with early detection of coronary disease and to support
its pioneering patient research projects.
Professor Lahiri, Consultant Cardiologist at The Wellington Hospital
commented: “We needed to marry the requirements of our research facility
with the needs of our clinical practice. This meant we needed scanners
that could maintain high volume throughput, while offering the highest
precision imaging that can support in-depth research capabilities.
Siemens was the obvious choice for us, due to its long standing
commitment to developing the latest technology that promotes efficient
examination and achieves superior image quality.”
The group is ready to begin sophisticated trials to aid in rapid and
accurate diagnosis of heart disease in patients presenting to the NHS
‘chest pain clinics’. This is part of the Randomised Trial for Objective
Diagnosis of Chest Pain using Alternative Technologies (RADICAL Trial).
This will pave the way for improved diagnosis and cost-effective
treatment.