News portal of the Government of the Canary Islands

A gamma camera and a PET-CT have been added to the service, which will allow taking high diagnostic quality images of organs and tissues, as well as knowledge of their metabolic activity.

Nuestra Señora de Candelaria University Hospital, a center attached to the Ministry of Health of the Government of the Canary Islands, has expanded the equipment of the nuclear medicine service with a gamma camera and PET-CT. With this acquisition, which involves an investment of more than three million euros, professionals will be able to study tissues or organs with high clinical quality, in addition to learning how their metabolic activity works. With its implementation, the results obtained are improved, as well as the radiation dose given to the patient is reduced.

The implementation of this new equipment leads to a qualitative leap in its pathology studies, especially those performed in services such as digestive, cardiology, pulmonology or endocrinology.

gamma camera

This new image capture device uses gamma radiation, which is then injected into the patient using radiopharmaceuticals to obtain a two-dimensional image of the organ or tissue to be viewed. In the resulting image, called scintigraphy, you can see the tissue or organ being analyzed in two dimensions, as well as its functioning.

This way, the team conducts studies more quickly, reducing the radiation dose to patients. Likewise, it allows the optimization of the treatment given to patients with the segmentation of the affected area and the semi-automatic calculation of the therapeutic dose adjusted for each lesion and each patient.

An endowment to which the Hospital Center has allocated a total investment of 1,232,816.27 euros.

PET-CT

A non-invasive diagnostic technique is developed with PET-CT (positron emission tomography) with which images are taken of the patient to understand his body activity and metabolism. Cells that have greater metabolic activity, such as tumor cells, are able to take up greater amounts of the radioactive substance used on the patient.

With this equipment, which has an investment of 1.8 million euros, you can see injuries that were almost impossible to detect until now, allowing early detection.