AN eagerly awaited £1 million brain and body scanner will arrive at the Royal Bolton Hospital in January -- and it should be in use by next spring.

The MRI scanner (magnetic resonance imager) is expected to put an end to long waiting lists for scans by Bolton patients, many of them cancer sufferers.

It will mean more than 80 patients can be diagnosed a week.

The imager will be housed in a purpose built area of the Minerva Road hospital and has been bought using money from the Lottery's New Opportunities Fund. The bid for funding was successful after it came to light that the town's patients were waiting more than 15 months for a body scan.

Bolton people are allocated the equivalent of half a day each week for a scan at Salford's Hope Hospital.

The new machinery is so heavy that a special crane will be used to lift the magnetic part of the imager into place.

Clinical director of radiology, Dr Jonathan Tuck, is among those looking forward to shorter waiting lists after claiming that Bolton had the worst access to radiology in the country.

In August, a mobile scanner unit was brought to the Royal Bolton Hospital operating for one day a week, seeing 25 patients and reducing the waiting list backlog to nine months.