Benenden Hospital invests £1.4m in new MRI suite to expand diagnostic capabilities

Benenden Hospital, an independent hospital near Cranbrook in Kent, has opened its newly refurbished MRI suite, equipped with a £1 million MRI scanner.

To celebrate the installation an official ribbon cutting ceremony took place in July, bringing together the hospital’s imaging team, community partners, the project management team and hospital leadership. The ribbon was cut by world champion record-holding GB Masters athletes Mensah Elliott and Joe Appiah, who have both been Benenden Hospital diagnostic patients.

A Magnetom Altea MRI system from Siemens Healthineers is part of the hospital’s £1.4m upgrade programme to its imaging department and offers increased image quality and faster scan times, increasing capacity and allowing the hospital’s imaging team to identify health issues quickly and effectively.

“This significant investment underscores our hospital’s ongoing commitment to delivering high quality, advanced diagnostic care to patients in the south-east and beyond,” commented hospital director Claire Harley. “Alongside other services such as our comprehensive liver scanning ultrasound, this new MRI scanner expands imaging capabilities to ensure our patients benefit from the most advanced equipment available.”

The refurbished MRI suite has a picture wall with landscape photography of the local Wealden countryside to help patients relax and the scanner has a wider bore for improved comfort. The scanner will allow the hospital to offer more than 6,000 MRI appointments per year. Imaging manager Emma Masters added: “As an imaging department, we feel very privileged to have had the opportunity to be a part of this MRI replacement project and introduce exciting new technology at the forefront of medical imaging.

“The team is excited to work with our new Siemens MRI scanner, as we develop our protocols to decrease our scanning times, while capturing extremely high quality diagnostic images. The introduction of our new scanner has afforded us opportunities to improve the patient experience, and we are lucky enough to have introduced ambient lighting within the scan room and comforting imagery to aid the patient experience.”

Lead picture: Richard Houston, Caroline Hossein, Nicola Osman, Jodie Edwards, Lyudmyla McKenzie, Jacqui Farrow, Emma Masters, Emely Chirimuuta, Jodie Dexter and Maia Fenn in the MRI suite.

Published on page 28 of the August 2025 issue of RAD Magazine.