Advanced Imaging: St. John's installs 64-slice CT scanner

St. John’s Hospital installed and began using the latest computed tomography (CT) imaging software and machinery, also known as a 64-slice CT scanner, July 31

The device produces precise diagnostic pictures within five to 10 seconds, enabling one to “freeze” motion and better define certain disease processes. St. John’s new scanner is the Lightspeed Volume Computed Tomography system offered by GE Healthcare.

Features include production of images much faster than that possible with current four-slice and 16-slice scanners, improved fine detail resolution, and improved post-processing to generate three-dimensional images for treatment planning.

“This technology could dramatically alter the way we currently treat patients with suspected coronary disease and chest pain,” says Kelvin Van Osdol, M.D., chairman of St. John's Cardiovascular Services.

Revolutionary potential

Doctors say the 64-slice CT has the potential to revolutionize many fields of medicine, from identifying narrowed arteries to the brain, to finding tumors, to plotting surgeries. But the most radical transformation may come in the way doctors evaluate patients for coronary heart disease.

For patients experiencing symptoms associated with heart disease, the new scanner provides improved resolution of images of the coronary arteries that may make clear the need for more invasive testing.

Before the 64-slice CT

Until 64-slice CT, the only certain way to tell whether a patient’s coronary arteries were blocked was with angiography. Nearly 1.5 million patients undergo angiography in the U.S. each year. Many discover problems that may require interventions such as stents or bypass surgery. But in nearly a third of the cases, the results turn out to be normal.

Doctors hope that many of these relatively healthy patients can be ruled out if they get CT scans first. That would save patients the small, but real risks of angiography: a blood clot or torn artery.

"Within just the last few years, CT scanning technology has made incredible strides as a diagnostic tool," says Dr. Van Osdol. "As recently as last year, the technical gold standard was 16-slice, which required the patient to hold their breath for 25-40 seconds in the time it took to perform the scan, as compared to eight to 12 seconds with the 64-slice CT scanner."

The 64-slice scanners cost $2.5 million; this one cost St. John's about $1.2 million because the health system was able to upgrade the existing radiology facility instead of building a new one.

To refer a patient for a 64-slice CT or for more information about it, please call St. John's Clinic-Cardiology at 417-820-3911.

Read more about St. John's Cardiovascular Services.