Super Vision: Seeing Like Never Before

It was difficult to look away from the image on the monitor. The human heart was pristine, so vivid it seemed that Dr. Mushabbar Syed could almost hold it in his hands.

He could, virtually. With a click of the mouse, the heart rotated on the screen so that Dr. Syed could see the vessels on the sides, bottom and top of the 3-D image of the heart of a patient, a nearly 40-year-old man with a history of heart disease and recent chest pains. He had passed a stress test but because of the possibility of a “false negative,” when a stress test does not reveal the presence of heart disease, his cardiologist had ordered a cardiovascular imaging study.

“I see nothing here that’s cause for concern so far,” Syed said, “but we’ll take a careful look.”

His expression was serious as he leaned close to the monitor in the dimly-lit, state-of-the-art control room in the new Gill Imaging Center at the UK Chandler Hospital. To his right, on the other side of a thick pane of glass, a patient was undergoing a scan of her abdomen as a radiologist and a technologist carefully orchestrated the procedure. Along another wall, another window overlooked the room where Syed’s patient had just completed his test.

The painless scans allow physicians to see inside patients in more detail than ever before, and to assist them in better diagnosis and treatment decisions.

The team uses a key piece of next-generation technology: Kentucky’s first dual-source CT scanner. Using two X-ray sources and two detectors at once, the Siemens Somatom Definition CT scanner can capture images of the beating heart in a matter of seconds, twice as fast as other machines.

The Gill Imaging Center performs much more than heart imaging, however. It houses another state-of-the-art, 64-slice CT scanner as well as new 3T MRI and 1.5T MRI units used for the most advanced imaging of the whole body, from head to toe.

“These new technologies expand UK HealthCare’s already impressive imaging capabilities,” said Dr. M. Elizabeth Oates, professor and chair of the UK College of Medicine’s Department of Radiology and director of integrated medical imaging at UK HealthCare, the university’s clinical enterprise. “We offer patients and their families an optimal experience. We can further assure Kentuckians, as well as those beyond our borders, that whether they need prevention or the highest levels of care, they can receive it here at UK without having to travel long distances.”

Syed is director of advanced cardiovascular imaging and associate professor of cardiovascular medicine at the UK College of Medicine.

“We are pleased to be able to offer this technology here at the University of Kentucky,” Syed said. “We offer a noninvasive, quick, and highly accurate diagnosis and assessment of heart disease. This assists us in making well-informed decisions about the next step in our patient’s care—whether that be medication, angioplasty or surgery—or to even rule out heart disease.”

The Gill Imaging Center is on the ground floor of the easily-accessible Linda and Jack Gill Heart Institute facility, with its own entrance near the front of the UK Chandler Hospital.