The researchers see their teleEMS program as especially helpful for patients in rural areas and believe their approach is the first example of an MR scan being performed in an ambulance. They hope to conduct a pilot program in Charleston County to determine the feasibility and potential lifetime cost savings per patient. If allowed, it would enroll patients with suspected acute ischemic stroke where, when confirmed and if eligible, they would receive thrombolytic therapy while in the ambulance.

This, says Roberts, could shorten treatment times and open up thrombolytic therapy to a wider number of patients. She adds that the safety and feasibility of performing MR on patients during transport needs to be further studied and transmission speeds need to be tested in various locations, with clinical usefulness and scan quality evaluated.


“The next step is to optimize the technology to allow us to evaluate for large vessel occlusion using the Hyperfine MR,” she said. “This could change the way we triage acute strokes, and patients with large vessel occlusion, confirmed using the Hyperfine technology, could be transferred to the nearest thrombectomy-capable center without first being evaluated by the nearest stroke center.”

In addition to stroke, using an MR scanner in the back of an ambulance could help in cases of traumatic brain injury and with the use of a cervical spine coil on the Hyperfine MR, for potentially scanning neck injuries during transport.

Roberts and her colleagues are currently writing a report on their test run.

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