St. Mary’s Sacred Heart Shows Off New System

By MJ Kneiser, WLHR Radio, Lavonia

St. Mary’s Sacred Heart Hospital in Lavonia is now accepting patients for its new 3-D imaging system.

Last Wednesday, February 3, a special mobile unit was set up outside the hospital to offer hospital employees and citizens in the community a chance to come and see the new system and talk with the experts.

The system will be used primarily for mammographies.

St. Mary’s Health Care System Radiology and Cardiology Services Director Jeff Brown said the “Hologic Genius 3D Mammography” system will offer much more precise imaging.

“This uses a principle called tomography,, which takes multiple pictures,” Brown said. “This allows the radiologist to see through tissue better because we’re actually taking pictures in slices. So instead of having one picture, you might have 50 pictures. 50 pictures in one millimeter segments from the next, which allows the radiologist to pan through from one image to the next.”

Brown said that means the radiologist can see 41 percent more breast cancers earlier than with the 2-D system.

However, Brown said this is still a type of x-ray and should not be confused with an MRI.

“It’s similar in that we’re doing cross-sectional imaging, but we are using radiation and MRI’s don’t use radiation, it uses electromagnetic waves,” he said. “But we’re not increasing the dose (of radiation).

Brown said St. Mary’s chose the Hologic 3-D imaging system over several other 3-D systems because the radiation dose on their machines was lower than their competitors.

He went on to say that the technicians in the radiology department of Sacred Heart Hospital have been training all this week and began taking patients for mammograms on the 3-D system on February 3.