From the October 2014 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine


HealthCare Business News spoke to Dr. Frederick Boop, the chair of neurosurgery at Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital, about the importance of iMRI. “In the past, if a patient had a brain tumor and we thought we removed the entire thing, we would typically wake the patient and monitor them in the intensive care unit overnight and do an MR scan the following day.”

Boop says if that postoperative MR revealed they hadn’t removed the entire tumor, the patient would need to have their head re-opened and the process repeated. “Now we can verify our work while they’re still asleep on the table, which in some cases can save the patient from a second operation,” says Boop.


Traditionally, iMRI has required transporting the patient from the MR room to the OR. Transporting a patient in mid-surgery can lead to complications of its own. One company working to resolve that problem is IMRIS, which has constructed a multi-room surgical theater enabling MR scanners to come to the patient, not the other way around.

Jay Miller, the president of IMRIS, tells HCBN that the idea for their system developed in the ‘90s before evolving into a research project through Canada’s National Research Council in 1998. The company itself became independent in 2005.

IMRIS does not manufacture their own scanners, but instead has a working relationship with Siemens. “We’re working on ways to improve the real time visualization of tumors and things that [scanner manufacturers] want to kill with radiation therapy. And they come back more seamless, faster, and less expensive,” says Miller.

“We put these magnets, which weigh anywhere from four to seven tons, on rails connected to the ceiling,“ says Miller. By having the magnets on rails, technologists can usher them in and out of the operating room as needed. “Sometimes, not to be too graphic about it, but sometimes the patient’s skull is open. Before they close the patient’s skull they want to get the image to make sure they’ve done the procedure properly.”

Miller says their surgical theater, called VISIUS, does not require surgeons to use different tools than they would in a traditional operating setting. “A lot of them are titanium so they are MR safe,” says Miller, “They just have to make sure that when the magnet comes in that they remove any tools sensitive to the magnetic field.”

IMRIS is currently working on another advancement in iMRI which will allow surgery to be performed directly inside the MR scanner. Their project, called SYMBIS is a robotic system that would perform the surgery with the remote guidance of physicians, which means MR visualization could be utilized during and throughout the procedure. Miller believes SYMBIS will be, “The coolest thing we’ve ever done.”

October 2014 Magazine

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