JJ inaugurates PET-CT Scanner, Medical Cyclotron Centre

New Delhi, May 2 (UNI) Giving healthcare in the Armed Forces a further boost, Army Chief General JJ Singh today inaugurated a Positron Emission and Computerised Tomography (PET-CT) Scanner and Medical Cyclotron Centre at the Army Research and Referral Hospital here.

Dedicating the facility to the Armed Forces personnel and their families, Gen JJ Singh lauded the efforts of all those concerned with the creation of this Rs 28 crore high-tech facility which is expected to greatly enhance Nuclear Medicine imaging capabilities in the Armed Forces Medical Services.

The Medical Cyclotron facility will have the capability of producing ultra short-lived radio-isotopes like Fluorine, Carbon, Nitrogen and Oxygen. It will also have a well-equipped chemistry laboratory for making pharmaceuticals like Fluoro-Deoxy-Glucose (FDG) and quality control equipment like gas chromatography, thin layer chromatography, and high performance layer chromatography to conform to all safe drug regulations.

Patients would be examined on the PET-CT scanner where an anatomical CT image would be fused with a functional molecular level PET image providing tremendous incremental value in diagnosis, an official spokesperson said.

This facility has great applications in the fields of Oncology, Cardiology and Neurology and it would help not only in early diagnosis but also in staging, follow-up and treatment planning of patients thus revolutionising patient management.

With the inauguration of this centre, the Army Hospital (R&R) has become the fourth hospital in the country to have such a facility.

The other hospitals with this facility are the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC), Mumbai; Apollo Hospital, Hyderabad; and All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), New Delhi.

UNI DG MSJ ND1822