At the Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, nuclear medicine and radiology patients alike are poised to benefit from the advanced SPECT and CT imaging capabilities of Symbia Intevo Bold.
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Photos: Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust
Introduced in June 2017, Symbia Intevo Bold™3 combines proven Symbia™ SPECT and CT technologies with new, high-performance CT capabilities. Symbia Intevo Bold addresses the growing trend of healthcare facilities who use their SPECT/CT in a dual-use setting where, in addition to nuclear medicine studies, the scanner is also used as a standalone or reserve-diagnostic CT.
“With a flexible scanner like Symbia Intevo Bold, we can look beyond our traditional services,” says Zarni Win, MD, chief of Service Nuclear Medicine for Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust and radiology consultant. “In addition to nuclear medicine, it’s a valuable asset that can easily be used for full-blown radiology exams, either as a leased service or backup scanner.” With two Symbia Intevo Bold systems based at its Hammersmith Hospital in London, UK, Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust was the first in the world to utilize Symbia Intevo Bold. Hammersmith Hospital is a major teaching hospital in west London that provides a range of services to patients—renal, hematology, cancer, and cardiology care—and serves as the region‘s specialist in emergent cardiac services.
Available for the first time on a Symbia system, SAFIRE1 (Sinogram Affirmed Iterative Reconstruction) delivers excellent CT image quality while reducing patient radiation dose by as much as 60%1. Because SAFIRE enables fast image reconstruction, you can easily integrate it into your clinical routine, further supporting your ability to deliver the best image for every patient.
Symbia Intevo Bold is the only SPECT/CT to offer iMAR2 (Iterative Metal Artifact Reduction), a unique algorithm that reduces artifacts caused by metallic materials, such as orthopedic and dental implants. With this capability, you can curb or eliminate artifact-induced distortion in your CT images and utilize the enhanced CT information in attenuation correction.
The optional IVR (interleaved volume reconstruction) feature of Symbia Intevo Bold reconstructs up to 32 slices of overlapping CT images to extract the maximum amount of diagnostic information from measured data. This capability enables the evaluation of small lesions or fractures. The single-source, dual-energy capability of Symbia Intevo Bold employs two sequential spiral CT scans operating at different kV levels—to improve image quality and tissue characterization. In addition to CT-optimizing features, Symbia Intevo Bold offers cutting-edge capabilities in SPECT imaging, including xSPECT Quant™3 and xSPECT Bone™ technologies.
Win remarks that the name of the scanner [Bold] is a good fit and notes that it is more sensitive than others. “We can now localize and detect lesions more accurately, which could mean that fewer diagnostic interventions are needed for patients,” he shares. “And, with technologies like xSPECT Bone, where the SPECT/CT images are quite clear, I think it will be easier to explain findings and get quicker alignment in board meetings. We can really leverage and set ourselves apart with this new scanner.”