Photo/ interview opportunity: 2.20pm on Thursday 29 March at the breast imaging unit, West Suffolk Hospital. Lady Elsie Robson, widow of Sir Bobby Robson, officially opens the unit following a £1.2m investment in new equipment.

Lady Elsie Robson will officially open West Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust’s new digital breast imaging unit this Thursday (29 March) following a £1.2m project to install state-of-the-art machinery.

The project, which was completed earlier this year, saw two analogue mammography machines replaced with digital equipment. A third imaging room has also been created so that the hospital can increase capacity after the government extended the screening range from within three years of a woman’s 50^th birthday to within three years of her 47^th.

As part of the investment, West Suffolk has also taken delivery of a new mobile breast screening unit to provide an imaging service within the community.

Ann Hills, superintendent radiographer in the breast imaging department, said: “We are delighted that Lady Elsie has agreed with come to West Suffolk Hospital and officially open the new digital unit.

“The state-of-the-art technology is helping us provide an even better service for our patients by allowing us to produce high quality images quickly and efficiently. We are really pleased with the new machinery, which represents a significant investment and will continue to bring benefits long into the future.”

As well as providing better quality images, the new system will also reduce the number of women who need to be called back if there are technical problems with the image. This occasionally happened at the old mobile unit, as staff needed to return the films to the hospital for processing and therefore could not check the quality of the image while the woman was still at the unit