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Cancer diagnosis has received a new boost with Apollo Hospitals acquiring an advanced 64-slice PET-CT scan system with time-of-flight technology to diagnose the spread of the disease faster and with less radiation.

Explaining the system on Sunday, Dr Bhagyam Raghavan of the department of radiology and imaging sciences of Apollo Speciality Hospital said a radioactive isotope with a short half-life would be introduced into the patient and used to trace the spread of a tumour and examine the function of an organ.

“The technology will make it possible to see the axial structure of cells and organs. The isotope, when introduced in the body, combines with the glucose in the cells. Since the cells in a diseased body have very high metabolism, these areas will light up when they absorb the isotope,” she said.

According to Dr Cornelis A Hoefnagel, a consultant at the Netherlands Cancer Institute, a pioneer in PET-CT imaging, this technology allows “images that looked like ghosts resulting from nuclear medicine to combine with structural images to give a clear picture.”

Instead of subjecting a patient to the routine six cycles of chemotherapy, this will allow doctors to ascertain whether a particular mode of treatment was working after one cycle, he said.

“The time-of-flight technology reduces the dose of radiation by half, keeping patients and hospital administrators happy as it costs half the amount. The image quality is very good and brings to light tiny tumours which we could not see before,” Hoefnagel said. With the equipment costing Rs 12 crore, each sitting will cost patients approximately Rs 25,000.

Source: The Times of India

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