From the October 2017 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine
However, U.K. hospitals must prioritize and plan for new equipment, for our patients’ sakes.
The greater computing power and more sophisticated software of newer MR scanners means that radiologists can get much more diagnostic information from scan images, information which is crucial in improving patient care. For example, patient movement artifacts can be corrected, body organs such as the liver can be analyzed for their content of damaging fat and iron and the beating heart can be imaged.
Only newer MR scanners can scan the whole body in one go, enabling reliable detection of the spread of cancer around the body, or a complete and accurate analysis made of bony destruction in bone marrow diseases, such as multiple myeloma. The early use of whole-body MR scans also enables rapid and accurate assessment of the response of these diseases to treatment when compared with subsequent follow-up scans, and is far more sensitive than any other type of imaging modality.
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Dr Martin Graves, consultant clinical scientist at Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and Institute of Physics and Engineering in Medicine Fellow
MR physicists are key members of the multidisciplinary team responsible for delivering many aspects of an MR service in the NHS. Their remit can include MR safety, facility design and quality management. Particularly relevant to an aging equipment base are the challenges of effective service delivery and protocol optimization. The hardware and software limitations of older systems often mean that it is impossible to implement many of the techniques that are rapidly becoming the standard of care (e.g. multi-parametric imaging of the prostate or whole-body imaging.) Furthermore, older systems are often unable to take advantage of new technical developments that can increase patient throughput.
Although the CIB survey did not find a notable relationship between reported levels of system reliability and age, it is more challenging for the system vendors to maintain and repair older systems. This applies equally to the ancillary equipment that is required to keep an MR system fully operational, such as cold-water chillers that are often not adequately maintained. Part of the physicist’s role may be to help troubleshoot the resultant image artifacts and system errors and work with the vendors to determine the root cause of imaging failures and system downtime.
