Our Mission

At Loma Linda University we strive to provide, to both physicians and patients, the highest quality radiological medical services available, ensuring that these services are provided with reasonable efficiency; to foster the continuation of quality care by the education of the physicians, patients and the community at large. We continually strive to improve the quality and efficiency of this health care service through dedicated medical research.

Our mission is to implement these goals of premium medical services, education, and research by the effective use of our professional staff and the competent and efficient handling of the technical equipment under the group's supervision.

Among the many investments made by the Department of Radiology at Loma Linda University Medical Center--in modern technology, medical expertise, and highly skilled technologists--the most important investments are those we place in people: the individuals we serve and who serve with us. Through them, we invest in the future.

The department's primary concern is for the quality of care we provide our patients. The sections within the Department of Radiology are uniquely dedicated to this goal. Each section is staffed by fully certified physicians, specialists, and subspecialists, as well as by physicists, technologists, and support personnel. Both our diagnostic imaging and interventional radiology staff make patient care their highest priority.

In addition, the Department of Radiology offers a structured, broad-based accredited residency training program in diagnostic radiology. Over 280,000 radiologic examinations a year are performed. The radiology group is exceptionally cohesive and enjoys excellent relationships with referring specialty practice groups within the university system. Residents are exposed to the academic and clinical practice of radiology, with the ultimate goal being the successful completion of boards and subsequent competent practice of radiology, whether in the private or the academic setting.

The Division of Pediatric Radiology, Loma Linda University Children's Hospital (LLUCH) provides comprehensive pediatric imaging in all imaging modalities for pediatric diagnostic problems for the neonate, infant, juvenile, and adolescent. It serves the extensive pediatric physician referral base of Southern California’s Inland Empire – the large Southern California counties of San Bernardino, Riverside, Inyo and Mono that extend eastward from Los Angeles to the western Nevada border. Pediatric radiology is distinguished from adult radiology by technical factors, equipment, protection, immobilization and methods of communication with children and their parents, as well as providing distinctive diagnostic processes for pediatric disease.

Proton Treatment and Research Center

The James M. Slater Proton Treatment and Research Center at Loma Linda University Medical Center (LLUMC) offers proton therapy treatments for prostate, lung, brain and other types of cancers. This center is the nation's first hospital-based proton treatment center. Since its opening in 1990 over 14,500 patients have been treated. Through a multidisciplinary approach, teams of experts including radiation oncologists, nurses, technicians and staff treat patients with care to ensure they experience fewer side effects and better outcomes with the power and precision of proton therapy.

Using high-energy protons for medical treatment was first proposed in 1946. Protons were first used to treat patients with certain cancers less than 10 years later. Research and laboratory applications increased rapidly in the next three decades. It was not until the opening of the James M. Slater Proton Treatment and Research Center at Loma Linda University Medical Center in 1990, however, that the full benefits of proton treatment could be offered to patients with a wide variety of cancers.

The synchrotron was invented in the 1950s to produce higher-energy particles for studying subnuclear matter. Much of that work was done at the U.S. Department of Energy's Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab). Fermilab physicists and engineers built the proton accelerator that exists at Loma Linda University Medical Center today. LLUMC's accelerator is the world's smallest variable-energy proton synchrotron. It is designed to deliver a beam of energy sufficient to reach the deepest tumors in patients.