The first PET/CT system in India - Discovery ST has been installed at the Tata Memorial Hospital (TMH), Mumbai by GE Healthcare, a unit of General Electric Company.

PET/CT scans allow physicians to more accurately pinpoint where disease is located, resulting in better therapy section. This Discovery ST system is capable of 2D, 3D and 4D imaging with a larger bore for all patient studies or sizes and provides physicians with more sensitivity, speed, resolution, and diagnostic confidence when treating cancer patients.

This PET/CT system integrates a Positron Emission Tomography (PET) scanner with a 16-slice Computed Tomography (CT) scanner all in a single exam, non-invasively. PET creates images of metabolic activity in the body; CT creates images of the body's anatomy.

"For more than 3 years now, GE Discovery PET/CT systems and their advanced applications have given physicians more diagnostic confidence, enabling them to accurately target disease and appropriately prescribe therapy particularly in the worldwide fight against cancer," Stephen R. Bloze, president & CEO of GE Healthcare Technologies, International said in a release adding, "With a disease like cancer, for example, clinicians worldwide tell us that PET/CT scans show the size and location of a tumor, which enables them to prescribe the most effectively treatment path for the patient."

The Discovery PET/CT will help in providing a better understanding of cancer, cardiovascular disease, and brain dysfunction, allowing a more personalized course of treatment with the ability to monitor response to therapy.

"GE Discovery ST will help doctors more precisely visualize and diagnose diseases earlier than ever before and is the first-of-its-kind to be installed in India, said V Raja, president and CEO, GE Healthcare Technologies, India and MD & CEO, Wipro GE Healthcare. "In addition to its diagnostic precision, the GE Discovery ST can significantly reduce the time, expense and anxiety of multiple procedures for the patients that may take place over the course of days, or even weeks," he added.

Medical research published in the new England Journal of Medicine indicates integrated PET/CT exams provide extra information beyond that obtained with visually correlated PET and CT in 41 of cases because of its proven pinpoint accuracy in locating disease, the release said here.

"The Discovery ST second-generation design will allow a platform for all oncology, cardiac and neurology applications, on all patient sizes, with existing isotopes today and the potential for non-pure isotopes in the future," said NR Balamurugan, Business Manager of Functional Imaging at GE Healthcare.

"We were the first company to bring revolutionary PET technology India and now are extremely proud to be the first healthcare company to bring the breakthrough PET/CT technology to India," claims Raja.

GE Healthcare is a $14 billion unit of General Electric Company that is headquartered in the United Kingdom.