South Asia’s first PET-MR SUITE at Indraprastha Apollo Hospitals !

Shaping the dimensions of the ever evolving and complex healthcare environment in India, Apollo Hospitals launched The PET SUITE in India. The PET SUITE was launched at Indraprastha Apollo Hospitals by the Hon’ble Chief Minister, of Delhi Smt. Sheila Dikshit.

Paving the Way for the Next Generation of Clinical Multimodality Imaging Applications and designed to diagnostically address the complexities of human body, Apollo Hospitals has installed a PET CT and a PET MR, which is the first of its kind across South Asia, signifying a tremendous leap forward in imaging capabilities.

The PET MR System has resulted from the amalgamation of a state of the art whole body 3T MRI scanner and a high end PET system, which has been fully integrated and precisely aligned within the same gantry. This enables us to simultaneously acquire accurate information on morphology, function and metabolism. The significance of this facility gets augmented by the deft handling and interpretive reporting by leading experts in the field.

The PET-CT facility being equipped with state of the art 427 slice / sec CT scanner, Ultra HDPET with highly specialized 4D respiratory Gating software is a boon for cancer patients as the radiotherapists would be able to deliver highly precise radiation doses, synchronized with patients’ breathing patterns.

Addressing the media, Dr. Prathap C Reddy, Chairman, Apollo Hospitals Group said, “As the First to bring the PET SUITE to South Asia, Apollo Hospitals continues to deliver on its promise to bring the most advanced technologies in patient care. It’s a tremendous leap forward in imaging capabilities. Our highly trained doctors will now use one of the world’s most advanced combination scanners which will give them highly defined, 3-D images, enabling them to make the best choices about treatments across specialties. And since the PET MR is a system that can simultaneously acquire data across the whole body, the scanning takes less time thereby reducing patient discomfort. As MR has no radiation, the PET MR significantly reduces overall radiation exposure, making it safer for children and patients undergoing repeated studies for therapy monitoring”.

The advantages of the PET MR system would be its superior quality images with better soft tissue contrast, leading to better localization and characterization of lesions. Other than its application in cancer, PET MR will play a greater role in understanding various disease processes in cardiology and neurology. Its ‘zero’ radiation exposure from the machine (unlike CT), making it safe for pediatric case evaluation and for women in the reproductive age group indicates that it can be used safely for disease follow up. PET MR will establish a new understanding of the previously unknown interrelation between different measures of pathology and physiology in human body. With the enhanced ability to explore correlations between structure and function, perfusion and metabolism, tissue diffusivity and cell proliferation; PET MR potentiates our ability of gaining new insights into the progress of disease, unlocking new paths to treatment or even opening new areas of research.

With approximately 3 million people suffering from cancer in India and one million new cases of cancer being detected every year, there is an urgent need for early detection and the right treatment to avoid recurrence. PET-MR helps precisely in that by providing important information for early detection and staging of cancer, which can be a decisive factor for treatment planning, therapy selection including target therapy and follow up.