At an educational symposium for clinical and biomedical engineers – Completing the Picture – Dr Michael Waller, a consultant physicist at Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust, discussed the different imaging technologies available today. SUZANNE CALLANDER reports from the event.
Dr Waller began his presentation by looking at the cost of imaging systems. He said: “Medical imaging equipment is very expensive. If my Trust, for example, were to re-buy all of its imaging equipment today it would cost well over £50 million, maybe as much as £100 m. We have a replenishment and maintenance programme at the Trust which has a revenue cost in excess of £5 m per year.” With figures such as these it is important to understand the features and benefits of the equipment you have available and to use it appropriately. Dr Waller continued: “From a purely health economics argument it is clear that imaging is a valuable technology and this is fairly easy to prove. Imaging does not just have a use for initial patient diagnosis. A patient may, for example, require up to three courses of chemotherapy which can cost £100,000. So, if you can also use imaging technology to assess the impact of therapy after the first course of treatment, your management of resources improves and the imaging result could change the ongoing treatment options for that patient. “A good example of this was the introduction of PET/CT as a modality, nationally throughout the NHS. It was a decision that the Minister of Health did not take lightly, due to the high cost of these machines, until presented with a convincing body of evidence.”
Characteristics of an imaging system
Dr Waller then explained some of the generic characteristics of all imaging systems. These include:
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