Revolutionary imaging capabilities at ETMC Athens

By Toni Garrard Clay

Revolutionary. Mind-blowing. Phenomenal. Beautiful.

The reviews are more commonly associated with a blockbuster movie, but they're actually being applied to a spectacular piece of equipment acquired days ago by ETMC Athens. The 64-slice computed tomography scanner is absolutely the top-of-the-line in producing detailed images of the body's anatomy.

"We're talking Discovery Channel stuff," raves Richard Vasquez, who as director of the radiology department is as proud of the CT scanner as a new poppa. "Performance-wise this machine is a Ferrari."

Two key features
The 64-slice CT scanner has two key features earning its racecar analogy: incredible speed and breathtaking imagery. Once a person is comfortably lying on the scanner bed, his entire body can be scanned in eight to 10 seconds. In that 10 seconds, 800 image slices or more are collected and instantaneously pieced together again, creating a 3-D image of the body's anatomy. The image slices are stacked together much like a loaf of bread - only seamlessly.

"I've been in this field 20 years, and this is the best thing to come along," said Gary Nearing, a training specialist with Philips Medical Systems, which manufactured the new scanner. Vasquez agrees. "We're talking about volumetric scanning here, which means we can see everything - the heart, the brain, blood vessels - in all three dimensions," he said.

A vew from all possible angles

Consider the case of an imaginary patient who has a possible mass somewhere behind his jawbone. His physician orders a head scan, and he ends up in the 64-slice

CT scanner, where each of the 64 detectors pick up an x-ray beam as it spins around the patient's head, then computes the densities of the tissues the beam has passed through, and finally produces an image of that slice of the body.

Those images are then meshed together, allowing the specialist to look inside that patient's head from all possible angles: from straight on, from above, behind, below. A simple computer screen pass of the mouse over the image can peel away layers of tissue, muscles and vessels. Another pass of the mouse layers them right back again. Certain details can be highlighted and deleted, in order to get a clearer picture - and all of this in seconds, and at the operator's discretion.

"The overall benefit to the community is clear," said Vasquez. "Our people don't have to go to Tyler or Dallas or anywhere else to get this kind of imaging. … We're in the high-tech imaging game."

The benefit to the emergency department is considerable as well, given the machine's diagnostic speed: a full body scan in 10 seconds is remarkable, particularly in light of the history of these scanners.

In the early '80s, a head scan alone took about 30 minutes.

Pat Wallace, ETMC Athens administrator, said the new scanner is an example of the hospital's commitment to the people of Henderson County. "We continuously strive to bring the latest in technology close to home," he said.

Cardiologists and radiologists are getting images of the heart never before possible. The 64-slice scanner is capable of capturing images of the heart between contractions, so that the image isn't blurred by motion. "The evolution of speed," said Vasquez, "is phenomenal." And the highest point of that evolution is here in Henderson County.

Originally posted 1/8/2007