A SCANNER that has undergone a £600,000 upgrade was officially unveiled yesterday.

The scanner, at Darlington Memorial Hospital's magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) department, has already improved services by reducing waiting lists for cardiac patients.

It has cut the time patients spend in hospital from six hours or more to an average of two hours.

It means patients from Darlington and the surrounding villages, who would usually go to Newcastle or Middlesbrough for cardiac examinations, can be treated locally.

Lodestone Patient Care works with the hospital to provide and run the scanner.

John Saxby, the chief executive of County Durham and Darlington Acute Hospitals NHS Trust, said: "We can do much more detailed examinations as the scans the machine produces are of much higher quality, which leads to better diagnosis."