A Diagnostics & Imaging Week

Toshiba (Tokyo) used this year’s Journees Francaises de Radiologie 2005 conference (JFR) in Paris to rollout to the European market its Excelart Vantage 1.5 Tesla MRI scanner.

Excelart Vantage is a compact MRI system offering a combination of an ultra-short bore of only 149 cm with a diameter of 65.5 cm. Vantage, Toshiba said, offers several advantages over conventional MRI systems, which usually are tunnel-like systems offering specific homogeneity in the center of the tunnel. “If the tunnel is shortened, usually homogeneity suffers,” Toshiba said.

Hans Baartman, MRI specialist, Toshiba Medical Systems Europe, said that Excelart Vantage features several additional coil elements in the magnet “in order to increase homogeneity. Therefore, in spite of the shortened tunnel, the scanner has the highest homogeneity of any magnet in the industry over a 50 x 55 x 50 cm diameter elliptical volume (DEV). Because shoulders are usually wider than 50 cm, it makes it ideal for examining this region as it avoids uncomfortable patient positioning. This means that the Vantage is the only system that can generate such a large homogeneity field using such a short magnet.”

This large homogeneous field also allows body diffusion scans for visualizing cancer tumors.

A second key feature of Excelart Vantage is new technology for reducing acoustic noise. Without software or hardware modifications, the magnet in a MRI system normally generates a sound level of about 120 decibels – very unpleasant for the patient, and so headphones are needed to mitigate this.

Baartman said, “In MRI systems it is primarily the gradient coils which cause this noise because a large electrical charge is built up over a very short time. In Excelart Vantage we have mounted the coils in a vacuum chamber that eliminates the surrounding air as a medium of propagation.

“In addition, the vacuum chamber is mounted independently from the magnet so that there is no longer direct mechanical contact between the magnet and the vacuum chamber. This reduces the noise level from 120 dB to about 63 dB, which is a noise level just above a normal conversation, making Vantage much more patient-friendly.”

Escelart Vantage was previously launched in Japan and the U.S.

Chlamydia screening grows in UK

More than 78,000 people have been screened for chlamydia as part of a UK government program to target young men and women across the country. Latest figures for year two of the program show 60,698 people have been screened, more than a threefold increase from first-year results, which saw 18,000 screenings.

The National Chlamydia Screening Program (NCSP), launched in 2003, now covers 25% of National Health Service primary care trusts in England – encouraging sexually active under-25-year-olds who wouldn’t otherwise come forward to be tested for the disease.

The program has been extended to all other areas of England, meaning the government is well ahead of its target to have all Chlamydia screening offices up and running and offering full coverage across the country by 2007.

Speaking at the second NCSP conference, Public Health Minister Caroline Flint said, “It’s great news that we’re reaching so many young men and women – most of whom would have been missed had it not been for this program.”

She noted that the Department of Health is making both screening and testing services more accessible for the under-25 age group by offering them in places outside traditional healthcare settings such as universities, pharmacies and armed forces bases. The annual report shows that screening occurred in 21 types of settings across 872 different venues: 49% in contraceptive clinics, 21% in young people’s clinics, 10% in general practices and the rest in non-healthcare settings such as colleges, prisons and health promotion events.