system-familyToshibaCT

Toshiba Aquilion Lightning Family

Toshiba's compact-footprint, value-tier CT line. Built around a wide 75 cm bore in a chassis, power, and siting envelope tuned for community hospitals, imaging centers, urgent-care, veterinary, and global emerging-market installations where the larger Aquilion Prime / ONE platforms are out of scope. Five detector configurations span the line, sharing tube, detector pitch, and reconstruction lineage with the rest of the Aquilion family.

Why the Lightning matters

The Lightning is Canon's answer to the long-standing problem in entry-tier CT: most "value" scanners ship with 70 cm bores (or smaller) that exclude bariatric and basic interventional patients. The Lightning ships every variant — even the 16-slice — with a 75 cm bore, while keeping power requirements and floor footprint compatible with rooms that previously housed 16-slice Toshiba Aquilion CXLs and similar legacy platforms. That makes it the dominant replacement scanner in mid-volume clinical settings worldwide.

Variants

Canon ships the Lightning in five detector configurations. Each is its own System Card with detailed specs, clinical positioning, and refurb due-diligence:

  • Aquilion Lightning 16 — 16-slice. Entry trim. Community hospital, urgent care, vet, international entry-market replacement for legacy 16-slice Toshibas.
  • Aquilion Lightning 32 — 32-slice. Small hospital and outpatient imaging center, light cardiac on appropriately spec'd trims.
  • Aquilion Lightning 64 — 64-slice. Mainstream general radiology workhorse — the volume tier of the line.
  • Aquilion Lightning 80 — 80-slice. Cardiac-capable, larger community hospitals and full-service imaging centers.
  • Aquilion Lightning 160 / SP — 160-slice premium trim. Advanced cardiac, oncology, and AiCE deep-learning reconstruction.

What every Lightning shares

  • 75 cm gantry aperture — the family-defining wide bore.
  • 0.5 mm detector element pitch — the Aquilion standard, shared with Aquilion ONE / Prime / Precision.
  • AIDR 3D iterative reconstruction across the family; AiCE deep-learning recon on higher-tier trims (80 / 160 / Helios).
  • PUREViSION Optics tube design — extended life at the duty cycles community CT actually runs.
  • Reduced footprint and power requirements — designed to drop into rooms that hosted previous-generation 16-slice Toshibas, Siemens Emotions, GE BrightSpeeds, and Hitachi Supria platforms.
  • Console-based workflow with standard Vitrea / Vitrea Workflow integration.

Decision frame

Picking among the Lightning variants comes down to three questions:

  1. Cardiac? Anything below 64 slices is general-rad only. Cardiac CT requires 64 or 80 minimum; sub-second rotation matters more than slice count past 64.
  2. AiCE deep-learning recon needed? AiCE is a real differentiator (lower dose, less iterative-recon plastic look) — only available on 80 and 160 trims.
  3. Volume? 32+ scanners can sustain higher daily exam counts than the 16 due to faster rotation and richer reconstruction options.

Refurb / used-market notes

  • The 16 and 64 are the most common in refurb channels — 16 because of the global entry-tier replacement cycle, 64 because of imaging-center turnover on the prior-gen Aquilion 64.
  • The 80 and 160 are still primarily new-only — Canon's current-production flagship Lightnings haven't aged into the secondary market yet.
  • Slice count is permanent — no field upgrade path between Lightning variants. Detector + gantry are integrated; you buy the slice count you'll have for the life of the scanner.

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