Stanford opens new molecular imaging clinic

Stanford Hospital in Stanford, Calif., is opening a Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging Clinic this month, which will seek to assess a new generation of diagnostic techniques for earlier detection and management of cancer, heart disease and neurological disorders.

The $25 million clinic is outfitted with the latest equipment, including two new PET/CT scanners and a new cardiac scanner that produces a 3D image of the blood supply to the heart, said the hospital.

The clinic occupies 16,000 square feet on the second floor of Stanford Hospital. With several scanning rooms, laboratories, doctors’ offices and a central control room for technologists, it will bring together important imaging and lab functions that were previously dispersed across the Stanford University Medical Center.

This consolidation means patients can have molecular imaging work done at one time and in one place, said Sanjiv Gambhir, MD, PhD, who heads the hospital’s division of nuclear medicine and the molecular imaging program at Stanford University School of Medicine, also located in Stanford, Calif.

The clinic’s previous location, a 6,000-square feet space on the hospital’s lower level, will now house other imaging equipment, including a new MRI scanner.

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