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Patient-Friendly 3 Tesla Scanner
Ready to Help in Research
MRI produces very detailed anatomical images, plus physiological and biochemical information
It came on a flatbed truck in May. Cranes were put into motion, walls were broken down, and 20-footplus tall stabilizing posts were constructed all the way down to the basement floor to make room for a new addition to the Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) Center – a six-ton 3 Tesla scanner.
By September the scanner was ready for patients, fully functioning and operational, said Ponnada Narayana, Ph.D., professor and director of magnetic resonance research in the Department of Radiology at The University of Texas Medical School at Houston.
The 3 Tesla MRI, which is dedicated to clinical research, is unusually patient-friendly. “We don’t want our patients – especially children – to be apprehensive,” Narayana said. “So we have a room with a mock scanner to acclimatize the patients.”
In addition, two cameras are housed in the room to observe how the patient is doing and to get feedback from the patient, who can communicate directly with the operator.
The conventional MRI magnets are relatively long tunnels in which the patient must lie totally still for about half an hour or longer at a time and consequently may feel “closed-in.” However, new patientfriendly designs, such as the one at the UT Medical School, use “short-bore” systems that are shorter and do not give the claustrophobic feeling.
“The good news is that if the patients know beforehand what the process will feel like, it makes the whole scenario run a lot smoother,” Narayana said.
MRI produces very detailed anatomical pictures of the body and can provide physiological and biochemical information. MRI also is used extensively to understand the working of the brain by using what is called “functional MRI” or fMRI, for short.
“Because of its noninvasive nature and lack of ionizing radiation, MRI is considered to be safe for repeated scanning to evaluate the efficacy of treatment, even in pediatric patients,” explained Narayana, who also holds a faculty appointment in the UT Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences at Houston.
The heavy weight of the magnet makes stabilization essential. “Actually the Medical School sways back and forth, which is common to buildings in general,” he said. “But in the case of the 3 Tesla scanner, we had to mechanically stabilize it.” Rods of steel, wood and concrete at the base of the platform extend from the ground floor down to the basement level to minimize vibrations coming from the building.
A $500,000 grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) supported the scanner’s debut. A number of NIH-funded researchers from Radiology, Neurology, Neurosurgery, Neurobiology and Anatomy, Psychiatry and Pediatrics are interested in using the scanner.
— By Colleen O’Brien, Medical School