UK's first FDA approved 3-D Virtual Colonoscopy launched in London

The City of London Medical Centre is the first specialist diagnostic imaging facility in the UK to offer radiologists and gastrointestinal clinicians access to the most sensitive and sophisticated diagnostic Viatronix V3-D software to perform virtual colonoscopy and enable the early detection of colonic polyps as small as 3 mm.

The virtual colonoscopy software allows for 100% coverage of the colon and is the only system in the world to have won approval by the FDA for colon screening by CT without confirmatory optical colonoscopy.

The Viatronix software, which is undergoing extensive trials by Consultant Radiologist Dr James Bell and Consultant Gastroenterologist Dr Owen Epstein at The Royal Free Hospital in North London, is a remarkable breakthrough in gastrointestinal imaging - allowing highly accurate and accessible screening for the detection of colon cancer, polyps, masses and other lesions for the first time.

Uniquely, the V3D-Colon system enables Electronic Tagging to differentiate polyps, tumours and other lesions from residual material in the bowel - removing the need for patients to take laxatives - instead, the system merely calls for them to prepare with an easily tolerated simple low residue diet.

According to Bill Hipgrave, Managing Director of Vertec Scientific which distributes the software in the UK, "A paper published in the USA compared three different virtual colonoscopy systems and found the Viatronix system to be head and shoulders above the competition as it was custom designed for the application using a primary 3-D approach, unlike the others."

The national death rate for colorectal cancer is 16,000 people a year.

Comments Colon Cancer Concern, the UK's leading bowel cancer charity, "Someone dies from the disease every half an hour. But this needn't be the case - bowel cancer is highly treatable if diagnosed early"

Dr Emer MacSweeney, Managing Director of MedTel UK - which operates the City of London Medical Centre commented, "We are sure that the advent of this new patient-friendly procedure will soon overcome the negative image of conventional optical colonoscopy and so will significantly raise the number of patients 'at risk' coming forward for the detection and treatment of pre-cursors of colorectal cancer, consequently having a major impact on the second biggest cancer killer in the country."