The University of Ghana Medical Centre has successfully performed its first human scan using the Nanox Arc Xray Tomography Scan machine, making it the second hospital in Africa to use that technology.
The Nanox Arc, manufactured by an Israeli company, is capable of producing high quality medical images with unprecedented speed and accuracy at a cheaper cost than the regular CT scan.
It works just like the regular Xrays, but the Nanox Arc is able to find some of the minute issues in the part of the body being scanned that the regular Xrays might not be able to capture.
Because of the limitation of the regular Xray, patients may be required to do further scan in the form of the more expensive CT Scan, and which exposes patients to more radiation.
The technology was used at the UGMC on a patient-volunteer, Abraham Asare Bediako, at a ceremony in Accra on Thursday (January 17, 2024) to demonstrate how the technology works.
It was installed at the UGMC in 2023, but was only put to use for the first time after the Food and Drugs Authority had approved its use.
It would now be available for use by patients from next week.
“When you do the regular X-ray, the information from it is not sufficient enough. So currently, doctors may require you to do a CT Scan to see what is actually going on in the human body.”
CT Scan is more expensive, and exposes the patient to more radiation.
“The Nanox Arc works like the Xray. However, unlike that, it gives you multiple images which help you to see in details what is happening in the human body. You also pay less and get less radiation compared to the CT Scan. So it’s like an advanced version of the regular Xray,” a radiology specialist at the UGMC, Dr Daniel Amankrah, explained.
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