The first two floors of the new patient tower at South Texas Health System in Edinburg are now open.

Advance diagnostic imaging all in one place is what makes the radiology department stand out.

"Our whole goal is to make sure that the Valley can stay here and not travel outside of the valley to get care," CEO of South Texas Health System Edinburg Lance Ames said.

The state of the art technology is meant to compete with hospitals in large cities like San Antonio and Dallas. 

The new facility features a 640-slice CT scanner in addition to their previous 40-slice unit.

The new 640-slice CT scanner gives doctors a more detailed snapshot of vessels and tissue structure in less time.

"Our previous machine, which was a 40 slice, we would get only half of that coverage, so it would take about 10 seconds to do a scan of the brain, for example," Lead Radiology Technician at South Texas Health System Edinburg Albert Salas said. "Now, with this machine, we can do what's called volume scanning, which can do the same scan in about a 10th of the time, one rotation."

The 640-slice CT is considered the most powerful tool to diagnose cardiovascular disease and will allow radiologists to perform cardiac imaging that they could not do on the 40-slice.

Watch the video above for the full report.