Published on 02 July 2025
Benenden Hospital, the leading independent hospital based near Cranbrook, is pleased to announce the opening of its newly refurbished MRI suite complete with a £1m state-of-the-art MRI scanner.
To celebrate the new installation, an official ribbon cutting ceremony took place on Tuesday 1 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, both former Benenden Hospital diagnostic patients.
The new MRI scanner, a Siemens Healthineers MAGNETOM Altea, is part of the hospital’s £1.4m upgrade programme to its Imaging department, supporting its culture of continuous improvement and innovation. The scanner offers increased image quality and faster scan times, increasing capacity and allowing the hospital’s Imaging team to identify health issues quickly and effectively.
The refurbished MRI suite contains a picture wall with landscape photography of the local Wealden countryside, helping patients relax, whilst the scanner has a wider bore – the patient chamber – for improved comfort.
The new scanner will allow the hospital to offer in excess of 6,000 MRI appointments per year.
Hospital Director Claire Harley said: “This significant investment underscores our hospital’s ongoing commitment to delivering high-quality, advanced diagnostic care to patients in the South East and beyond.
"I'd like to thank everyone involved in delivering the project, from our fabulous Imaging team to all in the project management team, including Siemens Healthineers and our building contractor CFES, who ensured the installation went so smoothly.
"Alongside our other services such as our comprehensive liver scanning ultrasound, this new MRI scanner expands our imaging capabilities to ensure our patients benefit from the most advanced equipment available."
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 are excited to work with our new Siemens MRI scanner, as we develop our protocols to decrease our scanning times, whilst 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.
"We are all extremely proud of this project and hope that our patients enjoy their scanning experience."