Thousands of men will benefit from a revolutionary 3D scanner that can boost prostate cancer screening numbers by 50 per cent.
The machines do a single full scan of the body – rather than multiple images like current technology – and can process an adult in five minutes and a child in one.
The first has been installed at the Royal Free London hospital and will allow doctors to carry out 50 per cent more scans than with their previous device.
It means an additional 400 scans a year for prostate cancer patients, and up to 5,000 more a year for cancer patients overall, in this one hospital alone.
The £8million positron emission tomography (PET) scanner is 11 times more sensitive than the latest standard machine. Patients are exposed to half as much radiation and can be scanned at least twice as quickly, allowing earlier diagnosis and treatment.
The machines do a single full scan of the body – rather than multiple images like current technology – and can process an adult in five minutes and a child in one (stock image)
The £8million positron emission tomography (PET) scanner is 11 times more sensitive than the latest standard machine (stock iamge)
The first has been installed at the Royal Free London hospital (pictured) and will allow doctors to carry out 50 per cent 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 awaiting a prostate cancer scan will benefit over the coming years.
The Royal Free London has one of the busiest cancer services in the NHS, receiving almost 50,000 referrals a year.
The new device means scanning time has been reduced from 20 to five minutes, freeing up capacity to see more patients within days of referral, rather than weeks.
‘This is an extremely exciting development,’ said Royal Free London consultant Thomas Wagner. ‘The lower dose of radiation is a great benefit to patients… and we can see more patients.’
Dr Juliana Maynard, of 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 that kills 12,000 a year in the UK.
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