By Brian W. Kratzer Liesje Dotson, nuclear medical technologist at Boone Hospital Center, lies in the Positron Emission Tomography, or PET, scanner during a demonstration.
Lasers serve as a guide for the scanner as a patient moves through the machine.
The device can detect nodes of cancer cells down to 7 millimeters, helping determine the presence of cancer. Nuclear medicine is leaving cancerous cells with few places to hide. Boone Hospital Center last month installed a special scanner that helps doctors pinpoint cancerous cells by using dozens of sensors that can detect the disease in the body with the help of a little radioactivity. The hospital acquired a Positron Emission Tomography scanner in December and got it up and running in February. The technology itself is not new, but Boone Hospital s director of clinical engineering and technology assessment, Robert Hurst, said the images created by the hospital s new PET are sharper and more accurate than its predecessors.