M.D. Anderson Cancer Center acquires 5 Siemens' SPECT/CT systems

Siemens Medical Solutions will install five Symbia TruePoint SPECT/CT systems at the University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center's newest facility, the Ambulatory Care Building, in early 2005.

Symbia, which debuted in June at the Society of Nuclear Medicine meeting, can perform three different scans - SPECT, diagnostic CT, and SPECT/CT - in a single procedure.

Siemens' multi-modality platform, syngo, is integrated in the system and enables easy access to patient data. In addition, Siemens said the syngo software includes fully automated and integrated workflows, so that SPECT and CT datasets can be acquired and processed on one workstation.

"M. D. Anderson Cancer Center's mission is to eliminate cancer, and our goal specifically in the Division of Diagnostic Imaging is to provide the best imaging possible to empower our physicians to help cancer patients," said Homer Macapinlac, MD, deputy chairman, department of Nuclear Medicine. "Because the anatomical detail is essential to have in combination with the functional information, TruePoint SPECT--CT is going to help us in the diagnostic interpretation of clinical exams.

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