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Dr Kshama Wechalekar with the latest scanner at London's Royal Brompton Hospital
LONDON — A simple change in material technology is ushering in a “revolution” in medical imaging, dramatically improving the patient experience and diagnostic capabilities at the Royal Brompton Hospital in London.
The hospital recently installed a new £1 million scanner that uses a specialized semiconductor material, Cadmium Zinc Telluride (CZT), which has slashed the duration of certain lung scans—previously a gruelling 45 minutes—down to just 15 minutes.
“You get beautiful pictures from this scanner,” says Dr. Kshama Wechalekar, head of nuclear medicine and PET, who notes the machine is helping diagnose tiny blood clots linked to conditions like long Covid and pulmonary embolisms.
Very few organisations can supply cadmium zinc telluride
Faster Scans, Safer Doses
The speed and precision of the CZT-based scanner are due to its ability to detect gamma rays in a single conversion step, a massive upgrade from earlier, less precise two-step processes. This high sensitivity has a crucial secondary benefit: “We can reduce doses about 30%,” Dr. Wechalekar confirmed, minimizing the radioactive substance injected into patients.
The CZT for the machine was manufactured by Kromek, a British company based in Sedgefield, one of the few firms globally capable of producing the substance at an industrial scale.
Special furnaces are needed to make CZT
The Challenge of the ‘Wonder Material’
CZT has been around for decades, but its sophisticated, single-crystal structure—grown over weeks in small furnaces—is notoriously difficult to manufacture.
Arnab Basu, founding chief executive of Kromek, describes the process: “Atom by atom, the crystals are rearranged… so they become all aligned.” Once formed, the CZT acts like a highly precise digital sensor, detecting tiny photons with incredible clarity, enabling the machine to create detailed, 3D images. While CZT scanners are not new, large, whole-body devices like the one at Royal Brompton are a recent innovation made possible by this industrialized production.
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