Click here for a larger view

(Honesdale, May 24, 2006)… Wayne Memorial Hospital will have to literally “break down the back door” to bring in a new powerful MRI and a top of the line CT scan on the morning of May 31^st.  “The current ambulance entry door on High Street and the door frame will have to be dismantled, so we can roll in the two pieces, especially the magnet (MRI),” says John Conte, Facility Services Director at Wayne Memorial. Conte estimates the MRI or Magnetic Resonance Imaging machine weighs about three tons, or 6,000 pounds.

Both pieces of equipment also offer “breakthrough” technology that allows procedures to be done much more quickly. The Computed Tomography or CT Scan is a 64-slice unit made by GE Healthcare Systems. It can capture images of a beating heart in five heartbeats or an organ a second—meaning the average time for a scan will be cut back from approximately five minutes to 20 seconds!  At that speed, patients won’t have to hold their breath as long as they do with conventional multi-slice CT scans.

The new CT puts Wayne Memorial in an exclusive group.  Only two other area medical centers have CT scans with “64 slices,” according to Rob Brzuchalski, CRA, RT, RDMS, Radiology Department Manager at WMH.  A “slice” is a cross-section of the body being X-rayed by the CT Scan.

“Because this 64-slice CT can take pictures of the heart as it exists in its natural state, in motion,” Bruzuchalski adds, “it will allow us to do cardiac imaging, as well as other specialized programs such as CT angiography and virtual colonoscopies.”   ABC News has called the 64-slice CT “cutting edge” an