”
A couple of years ago, you couldn’t do this,
”
said Dr. Aaron Hayashi, president and CEO of South Valley
Imaging in Gilroy, pointing to a heart on his computer screen
– a flawless, crystal-clear heart in which most of the main
arteries were visible.
“A couple of years ago, you couldn’t do this,” said Dr. Aaron Hayashi, president and CEO of South Valley Imaging in Gilroy, pointing to a heart on his computer screen – a flawless, crystal-clear heart in which most of the main arteries were visible.
The images are the result of coronary artery calcium scoring, a function of the center’s new high-speed computerized tomography scanner, which can produce images so detailed that radiologists like Hayashi can look inside blood vessels of a moving organ to see whether arteries are blocked by calcified plaques, a symptom of heart disease.
Hayashi turned his attention to the man getting a chest scan.
“Ten years ago, a scan like this would take 30 or 40 minutes,” he said. “Now it takes seconds. Patients can hold their breath for a few seconds and be done.”
This is made possible by the machine’s setup, said Hayashi. A CT scanner is basically an X-ray machine on a round track. It goes around the body, taking images and, with the aid of a computer, transforming them into a slice-by-slice model of the structures inside. Old CT scanners used a single X-ray to do this, forcing the ray to go round and round many times, but newer technology like Hayashi’s machine, known as multi-slice CT scanning, combines the power of several track-bound X-rays.
“In this machine you have 16 rows of detectors,” said Hayashi, a graduate of medical programs at George Washington University and the University of California, San Francisco. “You have your choice of 16 times the resolution or 16 times the speed of old scanners, or some combination of the two.”
The added speed allows radiologists like Hayashi to freeze body parts mid-motion with the touch of a button. They can stop the heart in the middle of its beats, can take clear pictures of the lungs and image other organs that were nearly impossible to see clearly before.
These clearer images translate into increased detection of things like cancer, heart disease and other killers, said Hayashi.
“We can see growths as small as a millimeter in diameter,” he said.
For people with a family history of heart disease, or a personal history of hypertension, diabetes or other ailments, the images can be more than cool – they can be lifesavers.
Images of the stopped heart allow radiologists to see calcified plaque in the arteries around the heart, a recognized risk factor for heart attack. With a computer’s aid, the radiologist can measure the plaque in the three major arteries of the heart, compound the amount with previous history and generate a report on a patient’s risk level compared to others of his or her age, said Hayashi.
From there, a patient can better understand his or her need for lifestyle changes and treatment before plaques progress, said Hayashi. And though the $400 heart scans may not be covered by insurance, they may earn their worth in early detection.
One American dies of a heart attack every minute, and more than half of them don’t have symptoms before succumbing to the attack, according to the American Heart Association.
Patients older than 40 and who have either a family history of heart attack or a personal history of smoking, hypertension, high cholesterol or diabetes should consider the scan, said Hayashi.
Men should be checked at a younger age than women – 45 instead of 55, according to the scanner’s manufacturer, Toshiba. For additional peace of mind, the scanner is also capable of doing full-body scans.
The center also performs ultrasounds and magnetic resonance imaging, and significant price reductions may exist for patients who pay cash instead of billing their insurance companies, said Hayashi.
Prices for comprehensive body scans start at $579.
For more information, or to schedule an appointment for yourself, call South Valley Imaging at (408) 842-0855 or visit the Gilroy office at 8359 Church St.
