Somerset hospital invests £1.2m in ‘class-leading’ MRI scanner

Bosses at a Somerset animal hospital say they have future-proofed its imaging capabilities for a decade by investing £1.2 million in a class-leading MRI scanner.

Cave Veterinary Specialists, at West Buckland near Wellington, have bought a Phillips Ingenia 1.5T Evolution that it says will allow it to better diagnose and treat pets.

The scanner allows for 50% faster scans at a higher resolution that the Linnaeus hospital’s previous kit, so patients will require shorter general anaesthesia and it will allow more detailed and accurate diagnosis of complex neurological conditions.

Resolution

Cave said the new setup will mean it can expand into emerging fields such as cardiac MRI and advanced musculoskeletal imaging, and as it has a large number of channels with improved resolution it can scan different organ systems.

Tom Cardy, head of neurology at Cave Veterinary Specialists, said the investment future-proofs Cave’s MRI scanning capability for the next 10 years.

Gratitude

Dr Cardy said: “It’s not often in your career you get to work with a truly class-leading piece of equipment such as this. We are very grateful to Linnaeus for their ongoing investment in Cave and for providing us with an MRI scanner that will massively improve the care we can provide to pets.

“Faster and more detailed MRI scans will reduce the general anaesthetic times for our patients and allow us to diagnose conditions that simply would not have been detectable on lower resolution machines.

“The new scanner will greatly improve the patient and client experience we provide. This investment significantly increases the capability of our neurology service and the whole team are excited to get to grips with this amazing piece of kit.”