KEN IGE / KIGE@STARBULLETIN.COM Kuakini Medical Center's new GE LightSpeed Ultra CT Scanner takes pictures of cross-sections of the body more quickly than a normal scanner.

Kuakini machine
scans the body
in a heartbeat

The medical center acquires
an ultrafast CT imaging machine

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By Helen Altonn
haltonn@starbulletin.com

Kuakini Medical Center has a new scanner that can get a picture from the top of the chest to the bottom of the pelvis in about 15 seconds.

The new CT scanner has eight detectors, making it eight times faster than the standard scanner and allowing eight pictures to be taken at one time instead of one, according to Dr. Alvin Ikeda, Kuakini chief of radiology.

Kuakini is the first medical center in Hawaii and the second in the western United States to install the General Electric Lightspeed Ultra CT scanner, the fastest available.

"We have what any top medical center in the country has with this Lightspeed Ultra scanner," said Ikeda.

The CT scan, also known as a CAT scan, which stands for computerized tomography, is a radiological test that uses a doughnut-shape machine to take pictures of cross-sections of the body, or "slices." CT scans can see inside the body into areas that cannot be seen on regular X-rays.

KEN IGE / KIGE@STARBULLETIN.COM Kuakini's new scanner produced these images yesterday. Dr. Alvin Ikeda, a radiologist at the hospital, surveyed the images of a virtual bronchoscopy. The scanner will be dedicated tomorrow but is already in use.

Because of the speed of Kuakini's new scanner, a picture can be obtained of a larger area of the body in a shorter time, Ikeda said. This increases clarity of the images because they can be done before breathing or cardiac motions interfere, he said.

For example, Ikeda said, "It kind of allows us to get a freeze-frame picture of the heart." The scanner basically is synchronized so it scans during a certain phase of the heartbeat, he said.

"With a normal CT scanner, you can't do the heart. It's beating, and the scanner is not fast enough to catch it. It's like a blur, like a sprinter going by, and you can't see it."

Among its many uses, the eight-slice scanner can be used to assess the extent of coronary calcium deposits, to screen the colon without an invasive examination and to show the extent of damage caused by head injury, stroke, abdominal aneurysm, masses and tumors.

The speed allows quicker treatment for emergency room trauma patients.

"One of the main impacts has been new reprocessing software where we take CT images and can look at organs like the colon, and we can perform a virtual colonoscopy, which is a simulation of looking at the inside of the colon with a small camera," Ikeda said.

Another advantage is that the scanner can create 3-D images of scanned areas, allowing orthopedic surgeons, for example, to see complex fractures.

GE formed a research partnership with Kuakini, which was selected as a site for the advanced scanner partly because of its research initiatives. The Mayo Clinic and Stanford Medical Center are other GE partners.

The CT scanner will be dedicated tomorrow but is already in use, Ikeda said. It was funded through a $2 million donation by Akio and Yoshiko Morita before Yoshiko Morita, Sony's co-founder and chairman, died in 1999. The 1998 donation was in appreciation for the care and support the Moritas received from Kuakini.

Kuakini purchased state-of-the-art Digital Ultrasound machines and Digital X-ray units with the money, as well as the new scanner.

The Moritas also were instrumental in arranging a $2 million equipment donation to Kuakini Medical Center by Sony Corp., Sony Corp. of America and Sony Hawaii Co.