Valley Hospital & Medical Center has bought a new computed-tomography (CT) scanner that's faster and more versatile than the well-used machine it's replacing.

The General Electric Co. BrightSpeed Elite scanner, which cost $545,000, is scheduled to be installed and in service at the hospital at 12606 E. Mission by late today, May 7. The hospital's eight CT technicians have been trained on a similar GE BrightSpeed CT scanner at Deaconess Medical Center, says Kathy Holiday, Valley Hospital's imaging director. Deaconess and Valley hospitals are owned by Franklin, Tenn.-based Community Health Systems Inc.

A CT scanner makes detailed images of structures inside a patient's body using narrow X-ray beams emitted from a tube that revolves inside a doughnut-shaped gantry that's placed around the patient or body part to be scanned. The new CT scanner takes 16 two-dimensional images—or slices—during each revolution, and each slice is less than a millimeter wide, Holiday says. The system's computer "stacks" the information from the slices into 3-D images, she says.

The new machine scans four times as fast as the scanner it's replacing, and that higher speed will reduce the patients' exposure to X-ray radiation and the amount of time they spend in the unit, she says. Also, physicians will be able to study images more quickly and in higher resolution, Holiday says.

The new machine also has a fluoroscopy mode that enables technicians and physicians to view real-time, moving images of structures inside the patient's body, Holiday says.

The machine's fluoroscopy capability will be used to conduct perfusion studies while a patient is having a stroke she says. A perfusion study enables a physician to locate blockages in blood vessels that supply oxygen to brain tissue. She adds that a CT scan is much faster than a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scan, which otherwise would be used to conduct a profusion study. The machine's fluoroscopy mode also will enable physicians to view the placement of needles when conducting biopsies, she says.

The ability to conduct faster CT scans also will improve patient flow, Holiday says.

GE's brochure on the scanner says it will handle "typically up to 80 patients a day." The hospital currently averages about 30 CT scans a day, Holiday says.

About 75 percent of the CT use comes from the emergency room, she says, adding, "We have a very busy emergency room."

The hospital's longtime scanner, also a GE product, took four slices per revolution and had no fluoroscopy capability. It was installed in 2000, Holiday says. The life span for such high-tech equipment usually is five to seven years, she says.

"It lasted a long time," Holiday says of the old scanner. "It has been a workhorse. We used it 24 hours a day."

Providence Sacred Heart Medical Center & Children's Hospital here has three CT scanners. One is a 64-slice cardiac CT scanner, another is a 16-slice scanner, and the third is a four-slice scanner. Inland Imaging LLC, of Spokane, which has an imaging center at Providence Holy Family Hospital, on the North Side, has a 64-slice cardiac CT scanner there, a 16-slice scanner at its South Cowley center, and four-slice scanners at other centers in its network.