The City of Cold Lake has formally agreed to provide a $1.75 million loan to CGA Medical Imaging Inc for the purchase of a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) unit.

The MRI will be installed at the CGA imaging clinic in Cold Lake, and is intended to serve local patients as well as others in the region. It will be one of just a few full-body scanning MRIs in Canada.

The City will provide CGA with a $1.75 million loan towards the purchase of the MRI machine, while the clinic will oversee the renovations and expansion needed to house and operate the MRI.

The City’s loan will be recouped through a revenue sharing agreement with CGA once the machine is operational.

“There’s not a lot of municipalities that are doing the way we do it here,” said City of Cold Lake’s chief administrative officer Kevin Nagoya.

“We’re going to purchase the medical imaging equipment, and the medical clinic is taking on all the renovations and everything that needs to be done to the facility and operations in order to deliver the MRI services within the city of Cold Lake,” Nagoya said.

Cold Lake mayor Bob Mattice and Dr. Chander Gupta, the founder of CGA Medical Imaging Inc., formally signed the agreement August 7.

MRI is an important non-invasive diagnostic tool that allows doctors to have a precise view inside a patient’s body. Because the machines are expensive, there are relatively few of them in Alberta. Lack of immediate availability can lead to long wait times for some diagnoses.

Gupta said the equipment in Cold Lake will be the newest available technology.

“This probably will be the first MRI in Alberta with this kind of newest technology,” he said. The intent is to eventually use the MRI for cardiac and breast cancer screening.

“We are very sure that it is going to be very helpful for the people of not only Cold Lake, but the entire Zone 8 or the Edmonton rural corridor, which we will be able to serve,” Gupta said.

The city and CGA are working with Alberta Health Services to have the MRI service recognized for referrals.

Dr. Chander Gupta and Cold Lake mayor Bob Mattice were all smiles at the official signing. **JEFF GAYE**

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Cold Lake enters partnership to improve MRI access