PET-CT scanner installed at Cancer Institute (WIA), Adyar, Chennai.

The first-ever Positron Emission Tomography computerized Tomographic (PET-CT) scanner in Tamil Nadu was installed in the Canal Bank Road campus of the Cancer Institute(WIA), Adyar on Friday.

Launching the scanner, Finance Minister K.Anbazhagan said the advantage of installing the machine in a place like the Cancer Institute was that a huge number of patients including poor patients would benefit from it. He also spoke of the need to spread awareness of cancer among the public, as there were a still a good number of people in the community with undetected cancer.

Dr.Shanta said that PET machine can detect the metabolic months before the morphological transformation actually occurs. When combined with the CT, the scanner provides a combination of the anatomical and functional imaging to detect cancer, determine the stage of cancer spread, detect residual cancer or recurrence after treatment.

She commended the generous gesture of  Dr Kamakshi Memorial Hospital installing a machine they had bought at the Cancer Institute.

T.G.Govindarajan, president of the Kamakshi Memorial Hospital said the role of  the PET-CT in cancer was priceless though it had a  number of applications in other areas of diagnostic and therapeutic medicine as well.It was installed at the Cancer Institute so as to serve more people.

T.Rajkumar, director and scientific director, Cancer Institute, the aim of the organization was to take the state- of- the art treatment to people from all economic strata. And it has been in the forefront of introducing the latest equipment in cancer diagnostice and  therapeutics in the country.