BLACKSBURG -- A $7 million Imaging Center set to open Monday adjacent to Montgomery Regional Hospital will offer more patients in the region access to the latest in diagnostic medical tests.

Amid the contemporary furniture and earth-tone walls of the HCA Inc.-owned center, patients will find $3.2 million worth of new MRI and Cat scanners that can detect cancer earlier and perform less invasive tests for some forms of heart disease, said Montgomery Regional Chief Radiologist Dr. Michael Aronson.

Gone, too, will be the dreaded hospital gowns with their sometimes embarrassing gaps. They will be replaced with plush robes reminiscent of a spa experience. And men and women will be treated in separate wings to provide more privacy, Ingham said.

The movement toward specialized outpatient care centers is a growing trend in medicine across the country, said Nancy May, HCA's regional marketing director for Southwest Virginia.

The new Imaging Center will also help Montgomery Regional better manage its resources, May said. The hospital will keep its current radiology department to serve emergency-room patients and those admitted to the hospital, thereby eliminating scheduling conflicts with outpatient tests.

Much of the same machinery and testing services are already offered at the New River Medical Center near Radford, owned by Carilion Health System, said that company's spokesman, Eric Earnhart. Some of those tests have been available for a year or more.

But "there are plenty of patients and plenty of needs in the region," Earnhart said. Competition between "both great hospitals" keeps hospitals striving to offer better services. "So the patients win," he said.

Montgomery Regional's new center will also benefit the Virginia College of Osteopathic Medicine, the college's dean, Dixie Tooke-Rawlins, wrote in an e-mail Friday.

The center will enable "our students and future residents to training on the newest technologies, using cutting-edge equipment," she wrote.

The college is also opening a new medical teaching clinic at Montgomery Regional.

Locally, HCA also owns Lewis-Gale Medical Center in Salem, Pulaski Community Hospital and Alleghany Regional Hospital in Low Moor.