PET/CT Center Opens Newly Renovated Wing

New York, NY – The PET/CT Center at Columbia/NewYork-Presbyterian Advanced Imaging has expanded, completing a year-long renovation that includes one additional scanner, a newly renovated patient waiting room, and expanded physician and staff workspaces. The state-of-the-art imaging center provides outpatient computed tomography (CT) and positron emission tomography (PET) scans to the Columbia University Irving Medical Center community and beyond.

Located in the Allen Rosenfeld Building at Columbia University Irving Medical Center (CUIMC) in Washington Heights, the PET/CT Center is a 12,000 square foot facility that occupies the lower two levels of the Mailman School of Public Health. Radiotracers used in common PET/CT exams are produced on lower level of the center, which houses a modern cyclotron and extensive radiochemistry laboratories.

PET imaging studies are performed on four of the most advanced, high-sensitivity and high-resolution PET/CT scanners available today.

"The expansion of our PET/CT Center helps us provide our medical center patients with easier access to the highest quality diagnostic imaging care available today,” said Noor Ahmad, MD, vice chair of clinical operations for the Department of Radiology at CUIMC.

In addition to providing diagnostic care, the PET/CT Center conducts and supports research at the medical center, with a wet lab, a biology lab, and a micro PET/CT for small animal imaging studies. Research is focused on exploiting molecular imaging and therapy techniques with the aim of personalizing therapeutics and spans from bench to bedside—including chemistry, cell and molecular biology, drug development, preclinical animal imaging, and translation into humans. 

PET is a non-invasive diagnostic scanning technique that uses small amounts of radioactive material to diagnose a wide variety of diseases including cancer, cardiovascular disease, and Alzheimer’s disease. It can detect biochemical changes in body tissues before structural changes occur from disease. This information allows clinicians to be proactive in their treatments and enables researchers to develop early biomarkers of disease that can aid diagnosis and advance drug development.