Nuclear Medicine Imaging System is latest addition to Morrow County Hospital Radiology Services

In a con­tin­u­ing effort to pro­vide accu­rate diag­nos­tic imag­ing and qual­ity patient care, Mor­row County Hos­pi­tal is proud to announce a new ser­vice line within Radi­ol­ogy Ser­vices start­ing in mid-July, with the pur­chase of a GE Mil­len­nium MG nuclear med­i­cine cam­era imag­ing sys­tem. Radi­ol­ogy Direc­tor Russ Mer­rin, BS, RT®, (N), CNMT, NCT noted, “This sys­tem is ideal for the early detec­tion and stag­ing of can­cer, heart dis­ease, and other hard-to-diagnose dis­or­ders. We are very pleased to have this state-of-the-art tech­nol­ogy at Mor­row County Hos­pi­tal and avail­able for our physi­cians and patients.”

This new imag­ing sys­tem per­forms all of the lat­est sin­gle pho­ton emis­sion com­puted tomog­ra­phy (SPECT) imag­ing stud­ies, plus all of the more rou­tine pla­nar exams. Its high-definition dig­i­tal detec­tors offer unsur­passed imag­ing per­for­mance and expanded clin­i­cal capa­bil­i­ties. Its design enhances patient com­fort and enables tech­ni­cians to per­form highly accu­rate organ and tissue-specific studies.

Nuclear med­i­cine dif­fers from other diag­nos­tic tests because it deter­mines the pres­ence of dis­ease based upon bio­log­i­cal changes rather than changes in anatomy. The GE Mil­len­nium MG has two detec­tors to per­form faster pro­ce­dures, such as ana­lyze kid­ney func­tion, scan lungs for res­pi­ra­tory and blood flow prob­lems, and eval­u­ate bones for frac­tures, infec­tion, arthri­tis and tumors.

Unlike other imag­ing tech­nolo­gies such as X-ray or Mag­netic Res­o­nance Imag­ing (MRI) that pro­vide struc­tural or geo­graphic infor­ma­tion, nuclear med­i­cine detects activ­ity on a mol­e­c­u­lar level. The sys­tem works by detect­ing benign radi­a­tion emit­ted from a radioiso­tope given to a patient. Once inside the patient, the radioiso­tope is attracted to a spe­cific organ or area of the body. These areas absorb the radioiso­tope in quan­ti­ties greater than those absorbed by sur­round­ing tis­sues. The radioiso­tope high­lights the area to be exam­ined thus per­mit­ting images of the inter­nal body struc­tures and other func­tions. Because of this, for exam­ple, nuclear scans of the heart can be used to detect coro­nary artery dis­ease and mea­sure the heart’s function.

This new tech­nol­ogy will facil­i­tate diag­noses by com­bin­ing patient com­fort, speed, and superb images that will be inter­preted by the board-certified car­di­ol­o­gists and board-certified radi­ol­o­gists of River­side Radi­ol­ogy Inter­ven­tional Asso­ciates., Inc.

To sched­ule nuclear med­i­cine appoint­ments, please call MCH Radi­ol­ogy – (419) 949‑3090.

Posted by Randa Wagner on Jul 3 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.