Your Health: Catching cancer early with new scanning technology

LANSING, Mich. (WILX) - A positron emission tomography (PET) scan is an imaging test that doctors traditionally use to evaluate patients for cancer. But it requires a dose of radiation, and a patient needs to lie still for 30 minutes or more.

Some hospitals are now adopting new technology designed to capture sharper images in a quarter of the time.

If you’ve ever needed a body scan after an injury, or potentially for cancer, you know what it feels like to be very still inside a tight tube.

“A typical PET CT scan would be from eyes to thighs, which takes about 25 to 30 minutes,” Dr. Ashok Muthukrishnan says. “Because they’re already sick, they have cancer. And some are claustrophobic. So, when they get on the scanner, they’re really nervous.”

A traditional PET scan creates three-dimensional images of the inside of the body, but first, medical technicians need to administer a mildly radioactive drug so cells that are potentially cancerous will show up on the images. Now, a new PET CT scan, called the Quadra is designed to work as four pet scans in one. It significantly decreases the time a patient is in the machine.

“For a scan that takes 20, 25 minutes, this takes only about four to five minutes,” says Dr. Muthukrishnan.

Radiologists say patients need a lower dose of the radioactive drug when they are in the Quadra and the images are sharper than those produced by traditional scanners.

“They’re going to get staged more appropriately and more accurately,” Dr. Muthukrishnan says.

Helping doctors catch tiny cancers early so patients can start treatment right away.

Radiologists say the new Quadra scanner can be used for diagnosing infections as well as cardiovascular and neurologic diseases.

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