The London Chest Hospital, part of Barts and The London NHS Trust, has installed the first Siemens Somatom Definition Flash CT system in the UK for fast CT speed combined with low radiation dose.
The scanner purchase was made possible by funding from The National Institute of Health Research (NIHR), enabling experts at Barts and The London Cardiovascular Biomedical Research Unit to undertake cardiac research. The CT system can perform a detailed scan of the entire heart in just 250 milliseconds, which is less than half a heart beat. Due to its high scanning speed, patients are exposed to a much lower radiation dose. For the first time, the heart can be examined at a radiation exposure level that is three times lower than the background radiation a person naturally absorbs in a year.
