Prostate cancer and Alzheimer's patients to benefit from new 20-tonne MRI scanner

Patients with diseases including prostate cancer, Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s will benefit from a 20-tonne MRI scanner being installed at a London hospital.

The £10.8 million machine will be the most powerful in the capital, and one of only several in the UK, when it arrives at St Thomas’ later this year.

It provides detailed, higher quality images than conventional MRI machines, enabling it to detect the more subtle changes that diseases cause in the body, leading to improved patient care.

It will initially be used on patients who have volunteered to take part in studies, rather than for day-to-day treatment but is expected to transform clinical research in the capital.

A special focus will be research into diseases and disorders affecting babies and children, such as autism, as well as heart and musculoskeletal conditions.

In order to get the huge scanner, which is three metres wide and three metres high, inside St Thomas’, part of a wall will need to be removed and special foundations will be put in place to support its weight.

The scanner will be “hosted” by King’s College London’s school of biomedical engineering but also available to researchers from King’s Health Partners Academic Health Sciences Centre, Imperial College London, University College London and the Institute of Cancer Research.

It has been funded by King’s College London and the Wellcome Trust.

Lead researcher Joseph Hajnal, professor of imaging science at King’s College, said: “We expect that using it will lead to many benefits for patients, including faster diagnosis and more targeted treatments. If research shows that it does, then in future it will be used for patients in clinical settings, as well as for research.”