New CT Scan Machine at ABQ BioPark Advances Animal Healthcare

ABQ BioPark’s animal hospital recently became one of only about a dozen zoos nationwide to acquire an innovative on-site CT scanner, giving the veterinary team faster, more detailed insight into animal health while reducing the need for off-site transport to other hospitals or care facilities. 

The high-end machine from FUJIFILM Healthcare Americas Corporation is the first of its kind at the BioPark and will benefit animal wellness for years to come. The CT system provides excellent image quality, advanced dose reduction technologies, and a compact footprint. 

With hospital-grade imaging now available, the BioPark can make advanced scans part of routine preventive care and help the veterinary team diagnose issues earlier and move to treatment plans sooner.

“It's wonderful to have it here up and running; we're absolutely thrilled,” said BioPark Senior Veterinarian Dr. Carol Bradford. “It’s going to increase the preventative care that we can do and allow us to hopefully diagnose and treat conditions faster, while also being less disruptive for the animals compared to leaving the BioPark for imaging.”

A CT scanner is a valuable healthcare tool that creates a 3D image of an individual’s body and provides higher detail than an x-ray, which tends to be two dimensional. This machine is the same type found in a human hospital and can fit anything from a penguin to a big cat, like a tiger. 

_{An anesthetized wallaby is prepped by BioPark vet staff for a CT scan.}

CT imaging can also help veterinary teams evaluate areas that can be difficult to fully assess with standard X-rays alone, supporting more confident decisions about next steps in care.

While more common in human healthcare, on-site CT scanners remain relatively rare in zoo settings. In the past, animals at the BioPark would have to be transported off-site which was an intensive process and could stress the animals. Having this capability in-house helps the veterinary team plan imaging more efficiently and reduces the logistical lift involved with multi-institution collaboration and movement of animals for medical procedures. 

“With our new cutting edge CT scanner, we'll also be able to develop a database of what's normal for the animal or for that species,” said Bradford. “So if and when anything were to change with their health care, we could compare pre and post images and be able to likely catch and treat things early for a better, positive outcome. Over time, those baseline scans will become an important reference point for proactive care.”

The $450,000 CT scan machine was generously funded by the New Mexico BioPark Society. Accompanying construction and design work to create an operable space for the machine was funded by gross receipts tax (GRT) funds.

“We'll probably start using it one to two times per week, where in the past we would take animals off grounds maybe once or twice a year, so I definitely think the machine will be highly utilized and produce high-quality images for years and years to come,” said Bradford. 

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