As Open As It Gets

A new, patient friendly MRI machine has come to town. It's a multi-position, high field, open MRI scanner that is unlike the open MRI's most people are familiar with.

The assembling of this $2 million dollar machine was completed last month at Advanced Imaging Concepts in Brooksville and is the only MRI machine of it's kind in the area that includes Pasco, Citrus and Marion counties.

"We can do an MRI in a sitting position, lying position, bending backward, bending forward or flexing and extending," says Dr. Aruna Madera. She and her son Dr. Naveen Bikasanni are partners in Advanced Imaging Concepts.

"It offers more studies to more patients," explains Bikkasani. "Some patients can't get a study on a traditional closed magnet because of weight restrictions or claustrophobia. This has a weight ratio of 500 pounds and in Hernando County the other magnets are rated at 300 pounds."

The machine, which is made by Fonar, is a giant. It weighs 145.5 tons and measures 8.5 feet in width, is 11 feet high and 14 feet deep. A chair sits in the middle of its front arch and there is plenty of head and legroom which is good news for people who suffer from claustrophobia.

"The fear, claustrophobia, in some people is tremendous," says Bikkasani who is a diagnostic and interventional radiologist.

"There are some people who are unable to get imaged at all. But you put them in this machine and you can get a diagnostic study."

According to the Fonar Company, a parent can hold a child on their lap to be scanned. And since the machine is radiation free there is no danger to the child.

What is an MRI

The MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) has become one of the most reliable diagnostic tools in medicine. It allows doctors to look inside the body without surgery, dyes or radiation.

The traditional MRI scanner is a tube, sometimes called a donut, containing a giant magnet. A patient lies down on a table which slides into the tube and is asked to lie still while the machine aligns hydrogen atoms in the body which respond to radio waves that are then processed by a computer.

The end result is detailed, high contrast images that allow doctors to see exactly what they are dealing with.

But MRI's can take time - often an hour or longer. That is a long time for someone to lie still - especially if they are claustrophobic.

Even the open MRI machines are still small spaces - the only openings are on the sides.

"People tend to wiggle when they're either uncomfortable or they're having anxiety," explains Bikkasani. When a patient is lying down they wiggle. When they sit in a chair - they hold still very well."

Other Advantages

Clinically, the big advantage to this MRI machine is that it allows people to be scanned in the position that causes their pain.

"A lot of horizontal MRI's miss the pathologies of diagnosis because the patient is lying flat," explains Doug Carter who works in marketing for Fonar in the Southeast Region.

"When you're in a load bearing position you see things that you very often don't see in the horizontal position."

Bikkasani notes this is especially beneficial when the patient has a back problem. "Most people, when they are experiencing back pain, they don't experience it when they're laying down. With this system, if they're having the pain bending over, you can have them bend over. If they are experiencing transient nerve deficit, you can simulate that body position so you can see what's causing that deficit."

For example, if a patient is lying down, the image taken will show a normal alignment of the vertebrae. If a patient is standing, spinal instability that can't be seen lying down becomes visible.

The hope is that being able to see the spine in different positions will eliminate or greatly reduce the number of failed back surgeries.

Another part of the hardware of this MRI machine is coils. This design includes several small ones that allow it to zero in on small areas of the body like the wrist, ankle and knee.

"We can do really high quality studies of those areas," notes Bikkasani.

The multi position MRI is also a .06 Tesla field strength. A Tesla unit is a measure of the strength of a magnetic field.

Other open MRI's are low field machines with a .2 Tesla rating. Traditional tube MRI's have the highest Tesla fields over .06.

Though it has only been in operation a month, says Bikkasani, "We're getting a very good response."

If you would like more information on the Multi-Position, high field MRI, visit the company's Web site at www.fonar.com or call Advanced Imaging Concepts, located in the Western Way Plaza at 13063 Cortez Blvd., at 866-597-0016 or 352-597-0016. Visit their their Web site at www.advancedimagingconcepts.com.