Medical Imaging
The Imaging Department at Saint John’s Health Center continues to grow in clinical excellence, with every imaging modality now available for use in evaluating and diagnosing patients. This includes Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), Computed Tomography (CT), nuclear medicine, ultrasound, mammography and general radiography.
With all of that, things will soon get even better. When the department moves to the four-story, 275,000-square-foot Howard B. Keck Diagnostic and Treatment Center in 2009, its imaging capabilities will evolve even further. At that time the department will add a 3.0-Tesla MRI scanner, among the most powerful magnets available, and state-of-the-art full-field digital mammography. The imaging capabilities at Saint John’s Health Center, already outstanding in their own right, will rightly be among the best in the Southern California area.
Today, an estimated 100,000 radiology examinations are performed annually by the department’s six radiologists and 25 imaging technologists. These range from the routine to the more complex, including scans of the head (brain), heart and lungs; motion studies; peripheral vascular evaluation, diagnosis and intervention; and diagnostic evaluations of women with the tiniest—and potentially life-threatening—breast abnormalities.
As its move to the Keck Center approaches, the department’s goal is straightforward: to complete all imaging exams using the latest digital technology, ensuring the most timely and accurate diagnosis and treatment possible. Ultimately, a virtually filmless imaging environment will be created, one where images are transmitted electronically throughout the hospital and its clinics and to other hospitals far and wide. Sophisticated storage and transmission of images produced in the department is enabled by the hospital’s ultra-modern Picture Archiving and Communication System (PACS).
In the history of medicine few specialties have evolved as dramatically as radiology. Over the past two decades such important breakthroughs as MRI, full-field digital mammography and digital radiography have all made their debuts. Saint John’s Health Center has kept pace with these and other advancements in order to provide patients with the finest evaluative and diagnostic care possible.
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