HHC's ongoing commitment to provide superb health care is reflected by a major investment in the next generation of technology-far surpassing that of other area hospitals - that has made the city's public hospitals a leader in health care innovation.

Lincoln Medical and Mental Health Center was the first HHC facility, and one of a small number of hospitals across the City, to own a $407,000 digital mammography system which enhances physicians' ability to diagnose early breast cancer and maximizes comfort for the patient.

New 64-slice, $1.5 million Computerized Tomography (CT) scanners are now in place at HHC hospitals in the boroughs of Queens and Brooklyn. This "best-in-class" equipment enables physicians to pinpoint heart vessel blockages simply by looking at a screen, reducing the need for invasive cardiac catheterizations. The new scanners also produce results in a fraction of the time required by older models-two seconds for a heart image and 10 seconds for an entire body image.

More sophisticated $2.1 million Positron Emission Tomography (PET) CT scanners at Queens and Kings County Hospitals produce digital pictures to help detect early stage cancers and capture images of damaged heart tissue and certain brain disorders, including Epilepsy, Parkinson's and Alzheimer's.

With the help of a new, high-tech diagnostic tool at Metropolitan Hospital, patients can choose a less invasive procedure called capsule endoscopy to screen small bowels. A patient swallows a tiny camera encased in a pill and the camera journeys through the digestive system, literally taking hundreds of photographs that transmit wide-angle images to a receiving unit worn by the patient.