A Medical Cyclotron Centre and a Positron Emission and Computerised Tomography (PET-CT) scanner has been acquired by a premier army hospital here. The hospital will become only the fourth in the country to acquire such a scanner that would help to enhance its nuclear medicine imaging capabilities.
The army chief, Gen. J. J. Singh inaugurated the Rs.280 million facility at the Army Hospital Research and Referral here Tuesday.Speaking on the occasion, Singh lauded the efforts of all those concerned with the creation of the hi-tech cyclotron centre that can produce ultra short-lived radioisotopes like fluorine, carbon, nitrogen and oxygen.
It will also have a well equipped chemistry laboratory for making pharmaceuticals like fluoro deoxy glucose (FDG) and quality control equipment like gas chromatography, thin layer chromatography, high performance layer chromatography to conform to all safe drug regulations, a defence ministry statement said.
Patients would be examined on the PET-CT scanner, where an anatomical CT image would be fused with a functional molecular level PET image, thus providing tremendous incremental value in diagnosis.
This facility has great applications in the fields of oncology, cardiology and neurology and would help not only in early diagnosis but also in staging, follow up and treatment planning of patients and will revolutionize patient management in years to come, the statement said.
The other hospitals with this facility are at the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre at Mumbai, the Apollo Hospital at Hyderabad and the All India Institute of Medical Science here.
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