Latest medical equipment to provide world-class healthcare

This year Peter Mac is celebrating 25 years of offering positron emission tomography scans (PET scans). PET scanners are machines that help doctors check for diseases in the body, including cancer. Funding from 2020-21 will replace the current PET scanner at Parkville with upgraded equipment, offering one of the first machines in Australia with a digital detector.

Latest version PET scanners provide more accurate images in less time and with lower doses of radioactive tracers – a win for patients and imaging staff who have an environmental exposure.

Peter Mac Director of Cancer Imaging, Professor Stephen Stuckey says PET scanners play an important role in detection, diagnosis, treatment and monitoring of cancer, and this technology is advancing rapidly.

'A PET scan can show, with pinpoint accuracy, the location of a tumour in tissue or an organ and also indicate if the cancer has spread to other areas,' Prof Stuckey says.

Tumours in the brain, prostate, thyroid, lungs and cervix are commonly found on a PET scan.

'Not only are PET scans used to detect cancers, they help guide treatment decisions, are used to monitor responses to treatment, and to keep watch for cancer recurrence,' Prof Stuckey says.

'New ways to treat cancer – involving radiopharmaceuticals – are also emerging and this is underpinned by ability to perform these scans.'

Peter Mac recently celebrated a significant milestone – its PET service reaching 25 years. When Peter Mac installed its first PET scanner in 1996, it was only the third PET scanner in Australia and one of only a few in the world solely focused on assessment of cancer.

And demand continues to grow with Peter Mac’s imaging team recently performing a record 876 PET scans in one month – that’s an average of 42 PET scans per day. Across the year, Peter Mac performs around 10,000 PET scans.

Health services right across the state have benefited with new equipment from the program. Recent funding has provided state-of-the-art medical imaging equipment that will allow for better diagnosis and people receiving the very best care, closer to home.

Women in north-east Victoria will have greater access to early diagnosis and detection of breast cancer thanks to a new state-of-the-art digital mammography unit.

One of Victoria’s major regional hospitals now has the capacity to increase scanning by 25 per cent with a new computed tomography (CT) machine.

Replacing an older model, Bendigo Health was funded $800,000 for the new technology that will allow more than 10,000 patients to receive scans each year.

The new technology will allow brain scans for stroke victims and heart scans which are even more important with the introduction of a 24/7 heart service at Bendigo Health.

Learn more about the Medical Equipment Replacement Program via our dedicated program page.