THE Northern Centre for Cancer Care (NCCC) at the Freeman Hospital in Newcastle recently celebrated its 10,000th MRI patient scan.

The scanner was first used in December 2009 when the centre was the first in the UK to routinely use MRI to improve the planning of radiotherapy treatments.

Within six months of opening 70 patients per month were being scanned and today it is considered an essential part of the radiotherapy service.

Consultant clinical scientist Dr Hazel McCallum said: “Our MRI scanner gives us superb soft tissue definition in patient images that we can then fuse with CT scanner images. This gives the oncologists a better tool for identifying the extent of disease as well as any organs at risk in the patient.”