There are occasions when a medical facility has the need to image subject that have been contaminated with a hazardous or communicable chemical or biological agent. Occurrences of such conditions are often too remote to justify having diagnostic scanners dedicated to such imaging. A contaminated or “hot” chamber (20) interfaces with one or more uncontaminated imaging suites or “cold” chambers (22). The hot chamber (20) includes barrier walls (16) with selectively deployable containment tubes (14) that when deployed, are sealed with the barrier wall (16) and extend from the barrier wall into the gantry of the cold chamber scanners. The tubes (14) extend the hot chamber (20) can be extended into the cold chambers (22) for imaging while remaining sealed, isolating the hot subjects from the cold imaging equipment. The imagers can thus be used for both normal clinical scanning and hot patient scanning.