CEO Craig Fravel had this to say:
“I think when we’re done here, Santa Anita’s going to have the most advanced and comprehensive availability of tools in the imaging realm of anywhere in the world.”
A press conference outside the Southern California Equine Foundation (SCEF)-operated Nuclear Medicine Facility in the barn area at Santa Anita took place Friday to announce the new machine. Besides Fravel, speakers included veterinarian Joe Dowd, president of the SCEF, which had invested another $250,000 of their own money in the technology.
“It’s a much higher resolution than we get with our regular nuclear scintigraphy imaging,” said Dowd, comparing the new PET technology to the widely used bone scan–a comparison he suggested was akin to trying to read with and without spectacles. “The original imaging is two dimensional. What the new PET scan allows is three-dimensional imaging. And we can actually visualize it on a computer screen.”
Southern California Veterinarian said:
“MRI is the gold standard in human orthopedics, so, if your favorite quarterback gets injured this Sunday, they’d be in for an MRI first thing Monday morning. I think we’ll look back at this day and see that this was the day that set the tidal wave across the United States as just being the pinnacle of horse safety. And it speaks to the commitment of The Stronach Group, the Dolly Green Research Foundation, and the Southern California Equine Foundation.”
