New scanner, accreditation
for UC Davis CT services 

The UC Davis Department of Radiology has installed a state-of-the-art CT scanner that offers the broadest range of scanning capabilities now available for outpatients. In a related development, the health system's CT services recently were accredited by the American College of Radiology.

Last month, the department scanned its first patient on the Siemens Definition AS Plus. UC Davis Health System is only the second location in California to have this scanner, and is the first academic medical center in the state to have it.

"With this new scanner, we have the technology here that is second to none," said Ramit Lamba, an assistant professor of radiology and the department's director of CT. "This is a huge step for our outpatient scanning, and we have the scanner capacity at UC Davis to allow scanning of all our patients without delay."

The scanner, located in the Ellison Building at UC Davis Medical Center in Sacramento, replaces a 10-year-old, G.E. four-detector scanner. The new scanner represents a vast improvement in capabilities, speed and safety, said Lamba.

"We now offer state-of-the-art CT scanning, with all scanners having accreditation from the American College of Radiology," Lamba said.

Spotlight on Patients

As an African-American kid growing up without a father figure in subsidized housing in Pittsburg, Calif., Darin Latimore hardly seemed a likely candidate to become a physician.

When Latimore was 7 years old, his father went to prison for robbing a bank and didn't return until he was in high school. His parents divorced a year later. At his high school, many African-American students dropped out before graduation.

"I didn't exactly come from a background of privilege," he says. "There were few educated people in my family, and certainly no doctors. So a career in medicine wasn't something I considered a possibility."

A pivotal incident in his life occurred when he was in seventh grade.