A CRANE with a 48-metre jib has arrived at Colchester General Hospital as work to create a diagnostic imaging centre gets underway.

The machinery will erect the steel and concrete building frame and is due to be at the Turner Road site for six weeks.

The diagnostic centre will be a multi-million pound two-storey facility when it is completed.

It will include new equipment for three specialised diagnostic services - with a key part being cancer testing.

It is expected its first patients will be seen in spring next year.

Colchester Hospital University NHS Foundation Trust is working on the development in partnership with Alliance Medical Ltd.

The centre will provide:

n Magnetic Resonance Imaging - (MRI) scanning - used in the diagnosis of a range of conditions.The new building will have capacity for three MRI scanners, replacing the current single fixed scanner and a mobile scanner.

n Positron Emission Tomography - PET scanning - used mainly in the diagnosis of cancer. A PET-CT scanner will be available throughout the week in the new centre, replacing the mobile unit which currently visits the hospital for one to two days a week.

n Nuclear Medicine services, which use gamma ray technologies to investigate a range of medical conditions including cancer and heart disease. The new nuclear medicine department will have two main scanning rooms, containing a Single Photon Emission Computed Tomography (SPECT) scanner and a gamma camera, which will replace the current services at Essex County Hospital and Colchester General Hospital.

Alliance Medical won’t disclose a total cost for the centre, but the equipment costs alone are in the region of £5million.