A crane was needed Saturday to lift a new MRI scanner into Victoria’s Royal Jubilee Hospital.
The new magnetic resonance imaging scanner — a Siemens VIDA 3Tesla MRI scanner — required several hours of work to be installed, an Island Health spokesperson wrote in an email to Black Press Media.
| A new MRI scanner is crane-lifted into Royal Jubilee Hospital in Victoria on Saturday, Aug. 10, 2019. (Island Health) |
The scanner, which uses a 17,000-pound magnet and is double the magnetic strength of Island Health’s current MRI machines, is the first 3T strength MRI scanner to be installed within the health authority’s facilities.
The health authority expects the new machine, which will help diagnose complex conditions, such as neurological disease, heart disease and prostate cancer, to be operational by October.
The scanner is part of the B.C. Surgical and Diagnostic Imaging Strategy, an initiative launched last year, and its installation follows a Ministry of Health announcement late last month of a new MRI for Nanaimo Regional General Hospital.
Acquiring the scanner wouldn’t have been possible without the help of the Victoria Hospitals Foundation, the Island Health spokesperson wrote.
READ MORE: Second MRI machine coming to Nanaimo Regional General Hospital