Cooley Dickinson Hospital in Northampton is now offering advanced imaging technology to help battle cancer.
Many people have heard of PET scans and CT scans, both used to find where cancer is growing in the body, among other things. Until recently, the scans were done at separate times by separate machines, but now, new technology allows the scans to be performed by one machine and creates a single image.
The PET scan is used to determine how the body is functioning while the CT scan provides an anatomic image of the body.
According to radiation oncologist Robert Stein, "Using PET/CT scanning means we can determine the exact location of cancerous tissue and also rule out the benign tissue. If we find a tumor is localized (i.e. not spread to other organs), we can treat it more aggressively."
Medical oncologist and medical director of the CDH Cancer Care Program George Bowers calls the ability to perform the PET/CT scan "a major advance for the organization and for the patients" served by the hospital and its physicians.
Radiologist David Rifkin noted that the process is more convenient for patients, who traditionally had to come in for the scans on different dates.
The machine is also larger, which allows for more flexibility when positioning larger patients, and will hopefully help those patients who experience claustrophobia.
Alan Calhoun, medical director at the University of Massachusetts Health Services, says a PET/CT scan is only used for special situations, not many of which are needed by college students. Calhoun says he's only had two patients who needed a PET/CT scan in the past year, both of whom were over 60 years old.
In addition to being used in cancer treatment, a PET/CT scan can also be useful in detecting neurological disorders and cardiac diseases, according to Caritas Imaging, the health system that runs some of the scans at Cooley Dickinson.
Ben Williams can be reached at bwilliam@student.umass.edu.
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