Thousands of men to benefit from revolutionary 3D scanner that could increase prostate cancer screening rates by 50 percent
Thousands of men will benefit from a revolutionary 3D scanner that could increase prostate cancer screenings by 50 percent.
The machines take one full scan of the body β instead of multiple images like current technology β and can process an adult in five minutes and a child in one minute.
The first has been installed at the Royal Free London hospital and will allow doctors to perform 50 percent more scans than with their previous device.
It means 400 extra scans per year for prostate cancer patients, and up to 5,000 more per year for cancer patients in total, in this one hospital alone.
The Β£8 million positron emission tomography (PET) scanner is eleven times more sensitive than the latest standard machine. Patients are exposed to half the radiation and can be scanned at least twice as fast, allowing earlier diagnosis and treatment.
The machines perform a single full scan of the body β rather than multiple images like current technology β and can process an adult in five minutes and a child in one (stock image)
The Β£8 million positron emission tomography (PET) scanner is 11 times more sensitive than the latest standard machine (standard image)
The first has been installed at the Royal Free London hospital (pictured) and will allow doctors to perform 50 percent more scans than with their previous device
Two more scanners are expected to be installed at Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Trust in London and the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary.
Thousands of people waiting for a prostate cancer scan will benefit from it for years to come.
The Royal Free London has one of the busiest cancer services in the NHS, receiving almost 50,000 referrals a year.
The new device reduces scan time from 20 to five minutes, freeing up capacity to see more patients within days of referral, rather than weeks.
βThis is an extremely exciting development,β said Thomas Wagner, adviser to Royal Free London. βThe lower radiation dose is a great benefit to patientsβ¦ and we can see more patients.β
Dr. Juliana Maynard, from the National PET Imaging Platform (NPIP), which will work with the hospital on research data, said new technology would help detect prostate cancer ‘with unprecedented speed and accuracy’.
The Mail’s End The Needless Prostate Deaths campaign has raised awareness of the disease which kills 12,000 people every year in Britain.