From the October 2014 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine


Narayan contrasts RTS with the standard mode of transport, MR safe stretchers, which are not rated for hospital transport. Detachable tables are also not rated for hospital transport, so either choice will require more lifting and placing of the patient.

With RTS, Narayan says you can save ten or fifteen minutes just by completing the patient preparation in advance of arriving for the MR screening. “RTS is significantly lighter weight, easier to maneuver, and a less expensive option compared to a detachable table,” says Narayan.


Siemens is improving throughput with their MAGNETOM RT Pro edition MR, which works in conjunction with their MAGNETOM Aera and MAGNETOM Skyra scanners and features a table on wheels that mounts to the MR system.

With this table, clinicians can prep one patient while the prior patient is still being scanned. It can be combined with different tabletops, and allows the use of four coils in addition to the spine array coil which is bolted into the table. Like Toshiba’s RTS, this feature allows clinicians to get things ready in advance and not hold-up the line for MR scanning.

Vossough says, “You can use 3T to make everything faster, but the same resolution as 1.5T, or you can go slower, but make thinner slices at higher resolution, higher contrast. It depends on the philosophy of the practice. What do you want to do?”

At his practice in particular, Vossough says a greater emphasis is put on image quality. “In the past, we would do 1.5T at high resolution because we had optimized them. But when there was a question we would add a sequence or two or three, and that would have a negative effect on our schedule.

“With the 3T the quality is higher and we get it in a similar timeframe,” says Vossough, “And since the images are already high resolution, I really don’t have to add those extra sequences.”

Stronger gradients, greater bore strength, and more efficient patient transit are all doing their part to complete the MR process at a faster rate. “A few years ago [MR scanning] was a one hour slot, then it was 45 minutes, now it takes about 30-45 minutes, and continues to decrease,” Says Narayan.

This is your brain on an MR scan: fMRI, DTI, DSI, and PET/MR
As technology evolves, physicians are discovering new techniques to use and interpret the images in MR scans, particularly where the brain is concerned. HCBN asked Dr. Boop, of Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital, to describe two particular breakthroughs; diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) and functional MR.

“If you think of the brain as being made up of tracks and you think of the magnet in MR as exciting hydrogen atoms, then those atoms are going to move more freely parallel to those fiber tracks than they are perpendicular to those fiber tracks,” says Boop in explaining the concept of DTI.

October 2014 Magazine

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