From the October 2014 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine


Copper seams are also covered by soldering, which seals them tightly but galvanized steel seams are bolted together and much more likely to lead to leakage.

However, not everyone agrees. Howard Newman, vice president of Universal Shielding Corp., says that his company constructs their shields with galvanized steel. They chose that material because it provides some degree of magnetic shielding and he believes that copper is not an essential.


“You don’t really have to have copper to do an MRI room—it’s really not necessary,” said Newman. “I think a lot of customers think that they have to have copper.”

Although copper RF shields are more expensive than galvanized or aluminum shields, Imedco believes that the reliability and ease of modification justify the price. Magnetic Resonance Technologies and National MRI Shielding also use copper for their RF shields.

Repair it, don’t replace it
About five years ago, Magnetic Resonance Technologies started their MRI Shielding Planned Maintenance Program in which they go into facilities quarterly, biannually or yearly to test RF shields.

“Finding the leaks in a shield is more of an art than a science,” says Profeta. “You have to pair a lot of things together — test equipment, measuring, intuition, experience and you have to have technical munderstanding of what you’re doing.”

Over the years, he found that 90 percent of the rooms he tested didn’t meet specification. The most common issue is the doors, which is just a matter of wear and tear.

“Door maintenance is part of it, but there are things that can happen overtime that other areas become compromised,” he says.

In prefabricated MR rooms that are bolted together, Profeta finds that the wood shrinks and the bolts loosen up over a period of four to five years. Water from sinks in an upper level that overflow, a broken sprinkler pipe or flooding from weather events are also common problems he comes across.

About 150 facilities use the service but Profeta says that it’s not something that every facility is willing to shell out the money for. “It’s a hard sell because people don’t want to spend money on something they’re not making money on,” he says.

However, there are a few ways that shield testing and maintenance can indirectly save facilities money. If a facility is noticing artifacts in their images and they call a service person from their MR vendor, the service person will say that they want to ensure that the RF shield is working to specification before they continue to work.

October 2014 Magazine

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