Imaging Services

Each exam room at Southwestern Regional Medical Center features a window to a serene world: a Luminous SkyCeiling™
that captures breathtaking, seasonal scenes. As you undergo your tests, you’ll look up to cherry blossoms and blue skies, cotton candy clouds or trees full of crisp, colorful leaves. You’ll also hear soothing sounds that will help you relax. According to our patients, this tranquil "experience" helps calm them and reduce their stress levels.

You have better things to do than sit and wait for tests and results. You have cancer to fight and a life to live.

At Cancer Treatment Centers of America (CTCA) at Southwestern Regional Medical Center, we recognize this and do everything in our power to get you through your tests and to your results as soon as possible.

On average, you’ll only stay in our waiting room for 10 minutes before having a diagnostic test performed.

And imagine waiting as little as eight hours for test results. It sounds like science fiction, but it’s the only way we work—every day. Our talent and technology allow us to turn around results in such a timely manner.

We use the most advanced medical imaging equipment available, including PET/CT (positron emission tomography/computed tomography), MRI (magnetic resonance imaging), MRA (magnetic resonance angiogram), ultrasound and breast imaging tools.

In addition, we perform diagnostic scans in record time to collect extremely detailed sets of data, which optimize our chances of detecting small tumors. Our equipment produces digital images, which we evaluate at post-processing work stations for abnormal anatomy and physiology. Each month, we perform approximately 1,600 imaging tests.

Our experienced staff includes board-certified radiologists and board-certified, fellowship-trained interventional radiologists. A number of our physicians also have had additional training in subspecialties, such as molecular imaging and MRI. More so, all of our radiologic technologists have taken supplementary subspecialty examinations. They are either in-house or on-call seven days a week, 24 hours a day.

Technology and Tools

At CTCA at Southwestern Regional Medical Center, we use many different diagnostic innovations to locate and eradicate cancer. Here are some of them:

• CT (Computed Tomography)

  Our new multidetector CT scanner allows us to see objects with micro-level detail. According to Siemens AG, the manufacturer of this equipment, the scanner collects up to 40 slices per rotation, resulting in an extraordinary resolution of .04 millimeters. Ultimately, this means we can acquire data with incredible speed, all the while producing images that are of superb quality, detail and clarity.

  

  And something our patients appreciate is the fact that the increased width of the scanning space of this tool makes for a more comfortable, less claustrophobic experience as they undergo CT scans.

  Furthermore, we also use a Siemens multi-modality workstation that includes body perfusion software. This enables our interventional radiologists to see—in real time—which portions of a tumor are most active. Physicians can then direct a targeted therapy at the more active portion of the tumor and study the effects of the therapy on the tumor in real time. In addition, we perform lung analysis using a state-of-the-art Vitrea® workstation by Vital Images.

• PET/CT
  
  
• Ultrasound
  
  
• MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging)
  
  
• Mammography
  
  
• Nuclear medicine

  The two most common nuclear medicine exams offered at Southwestern Regional Medical Center are bone scans to evaluate for metastatic disease and MUGA scans to evaluate cardiac function prior to chemotherapy treatment and surgery.

In Imaging Services, we also perform interventional radiology procedures. Interventional radiology is a subspecialty of radiology, in which minimally invasive procedures are performed using imaging guidance. Radiography or ultrasonography are used to direct these procedures, which are usually performed with needles or other tiny instruments, such as catheters. The images provide road maps that allow the interventional radiologist to guide these instruments through a patient’s body to the areas of interest.

Many interventional radiology procedures for cancer treatment are performed on an outpatient basis or during a short hospital stay. In many cases, the procedures are less painful and debilitating for patients than exploratory surgical procedures. In addition, patients can typically recover more quickly and tend to have fewer side effects and complications.

Interventional procedures we perform include:

• Chemoembolization

  is an innovative therapy we use to treat certain types of liver cancer, or cancer that has spread to the liver from another organ.

  In this procedure, a small catheter is inserted through a needle (with X-ray guidance) into the patient’s femoral artery, located in the groin. The interventional radiologist then threads the catheter through the aorta (the largest artery, located in the heart) and into the artery in the liver, which is the one that feeds the tumor. The interventional radiologist then injects chemotherapy into that artery. This concentrated dose hits the tumor directly.

• Radiofrequency ablation (RFA)

  is a treatment in which we direct radiofrequency waves (heat) at the tumor to destroy the cancerous cells. Since cancer cells are vulnerable to heat, RFA can destroy them by raising their temperature through the radiofrequency waves.

  In this procedure, the interventional radiologist inserts a special needle electrode into the tumor using CT or ultrasound guidance. A radiofrequency current then is passed through the electrode to the tumor tissue near the needle tip to ablate—or eliminate—it. The heat from the radiofrequency energy also closes up small blood vessels, thereby minimizing the risk of bleeding.

  Our body perfusion post-processing software allows us to monitor blood flow to the tumors before, during and after RFA procedures. It helps us to determine if we have terminated blood flow to the tumor.

  RFA is a minimally invasive way to eliminate tumors in organs such as the liver, lungs or kidneys. It is also used to treat metastatic bone cancer.

• TheraSphere^®
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  is a treatment of localized, internal radiation that destroys tumor cells with minimal injury to surrounding, healthy liver tissue. It consists of millions of tiny glass beads (20-30 micrometers in diameter). Each bead has radioactive Yttrium-90 in it. These TheraSpheres are injected into the main artery of the liver by the radiation oncologist, through a catheter or small tube placed in by the interventional radiologist. The tiny radioactive glass beads are delivered directly to the liver tumor via its blood vessels.

  TheraSphere^® offers patients an alternative to chemotherapy, external beam radiation and other common liver cancer treatments.

• CT-guided biopsy involves removing a small piece of tissue for a physician to examine.
  
  
• CT fluoroscopy

  may be conducted via our new multidetector CT scanner. Interventional radiologists can complete CT fluoroscopy using live CT images to help position the probe/needle in and around critical anatomical structures, such as the heart, lungs and spine to obtain the best tumor specimen. It also allows physicians to drain thoracic, abdominal, pelvic and retroperitoneal lesions.

  The live images reduce the length of a biopsy procedure, saving time for both the patient and the physician.

  CT fluoroscopy also removes the effect of the patient’s breathing and motion on image quality. It helps allow for accurate depth and direction of the needle during procedures.