St. Anthony Hospital installs Toshiba America Medical Systems' Vantage Titan MR system

Oct 18 2009

To provide the latest in MR technology to its patient community, St. Anthony Hospital in Gig Harbor, Wash. installed the Vantage Titan^TM from Toshiba America Medical Systems, Inc. to offer comprehensive MR patient exams. The new 80-bed St. Anthony hospital is the only full service facility in the area and needed a workhorse MR system to conduct a full range of exams. The industry leading clinical capabilities of the Vantage Titan 1.5T MR large open-bore system allow St. Anthony to conduct a full range of MR exams at its facility. For example, St. Anthony conducts advanced neurological exams, including brain and spine studies, as well as orthopedic imaging on knees, lumbar, hands, ankles and feet.

The patient-focused features of the Vantage Titan improve exam efficiency and accuracy while mitigating issues around imaging claustrophobic and bariatric patients. The Vantage Titan features a large 71-cm aperture and open bore and offers the industry’s largest clinical field-of-view (55×55×50 cm). The bore’s diameter enables St. Anthony to scan bariatric patients with greater ease and reduces the feeling of claustrophobia. Toshiba’s patented Pianissimo^TM technology, which reduces acoustic noise by as much as 90 percent, is also increasing the comfort level of patients during exams.

St. Anthony MRI Technologist Gary Leslie has experienced these benefits first hand. “The Toshiba Titan has been the workhorse MR system for us and is able to accommodate the wide variety of MR exams we perform each day. We are imaging approximately 10 to 12 patients a day and have received direct patient feedback that the system is quieter and feels less claustrophobic than other MR systems. This has helped us to greatly improve exam efficiency and department throughput.”

Additionally, the system’s Atlas integrated coil concept allows physicians to perform multiple exams without repositioning the patient and also enables feet-first imaging for feet-to-shoulder exams. This means a more comfortable exam experience and results in enhanced workflow and technologist productivity. Also, Toshiba’s SPEEDER parallel imaging allows for increased acquisition speed and reduced examination times.

Another reason St. Anthony chose the Vantage Titan was Toshiba’s proprietary contrast-free MRA techniques – Fresh Blood Imaging (FBI), Contrast-free Improved Angiography (CIA), Time-Spatial Labeling Inversion Pulse (Time-SLIP) and Time and Space Angiography (TSA). These techniques are available on all Toshiba MR systems and particularly important because gadolinium, the most common contrast agent used for MRA exams, has been directly linked to a sometimes fatal disease that occurs in patients with renal insufficiency, called Nephrogenic Systemic Fibrosis (NSF) or Nephrogenic Fibrosing Dermopathy (NFD).

“The patient-focused technology of the Vantage Titan is specifically designed to improve patient comfort and compliance in MR imaging,” said Girish Hagan, vice president, Marketing, Toshiba. “St. Anthony Hospital’s installation and successful experience with the system demonstrates these features and continues to show our commitment to developing technologies that meet our customer’s needs.”

Source: Toshiba America Medical Systems, Inc.