August 2009

Sometimes a picture is worth ... surgery

Imagine detecting a tumor before it is big enough to cause symptoms. Or finding the true extent of broken bones in a trauma patient. Or making an accurate plan for surgery with only sedation, as opposed to anesthetizing the patient.

Installed this month, the College's new CT scanner, the Toshiba Aquilion LB, makes all of this possible and can elucidate life-saving information in a matter of seconds. In addition, the machine has a 50 percent bigger opening than the Hospital's previous CT, which makes scanning animals the size of alpacas as well as the head, neck, and limbs of horses possible.

"With this scanner, we can do more, do it faster, and offer better and more accurate images," said Dr. Ned Dykes '74, section chief of imaging at the College. "The Hospital's newest CT will aid in several ways: diagnosing, making accurate plans for surgical treatments, and showing the extent of the disease. It may also prevent the need for more invasive, exploratory surgery."

The CT scanner is part of an upgrade to imaging that will also include a new MRI and was funded with gifts from Janet L. Swanson, the TRIAD FOUNDATION and members of the Class of 1957. It replaces the current system, which was installed in 1996 and was capable of producing a single slice of the body at a time. The new scanner captures 16 slices of the patient's body in a single pass, making the process substantially faster, and offers isotropic imaging.

"The resolution of the slices with this CT is significantly better," said Dr. Dykes. "We've always been able to create diagonal sections and three-dimensional representations of the anatomy, but now we can do it with a level of clarity that makes decision-making more accurate."