Deaconess Medical Center says it plans to install a new imaging system in a special-procedures catheterization lab that it's enlarging at a total construction and equipment cost of more than $2 million.

The 1,300-square-foot room is located on the fourth floor of the hospital's tower on its campus at 800 W. Fifth, says Carol Evans, Deaconess' administrator of cardiovascular services.

The new system, which will include Innova brand "biplane" imaging equipment, will be able to take images from two angles at once, Evans says. That ability will reduce a patients' exposure to radiation, compared with taking separate images, she says.

Leone & Keeble Inc., the contractor on the project, started renovating the special-procedures room in mid-September. Bernardo Wills Architects PC, of Spokane, designed the project.

General Electric Co., which manufactures the Innova imaging system, will deliver and install the equipment in mid-November and will train staff members to use it over the next four to six weeks, Evans says. The system should be in use by year-end, she says.

The biplane system, a first for Deaconess, will be used primarily to test for blockages and narrowing of blood vessels in a patient's head, neck, abdomen, and limbs, Evans says. The hospital has other facilities and equipment for imaging the heart, she says.

The Innova biplane imaging machine has two arms, each with an X-Ray receptor, or imaging plane, about the size of a large flat-screen computer monitor. One is a lateral plane, and the other can be adjusted for other angles, so the patient doesn't have to change positions or undergo multiple injections of X-ray-visible dye, Evans says.

The special-procedures room will be equipped for doing angioplasty and stent procedures, she says.

The imaging system likely will be used several times a day, Evans says. It will replace a 14-year-old C-arm imaging system that's "at the end of its life," she says.