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3T MRI has twice the signal to noise of any other scanner. This is because of the initial increased cost of 3 million versus 1.5 million. But this pays off in better images. We can use that advantage to scan as fast as 4 times faster than other 1.5T high field scanners. The 3T advantage really works in the brain. We get images that are incredible. 1mm thick contiguous FLAIR images which would take 20 minutes of scan time on a 1.5T scanner can be done in 7 minutes. This give us the best images possible and lets us diagnose smaller lesions. 1mm thick images is an amazing advance. Most scanners at 1.5T scan with 5 mm thickness and a 2.5 cm gap. That means we have 7 images to their one. You can see a lesions sometimes on 7 times more images at 3T. Also we obviously pick up much smaller lesions which means we might ask you to come back for followup images to see that tiny lesions are stable. In MS we see literally scores of 1-2mm lesions. This means we see more but we have to follow them. No other machine can even see them all. We also pick up hemorrhage from brain trauma and white matter shearing injuries with at least twice the sensitivity. This is important in head trauma. With all the patients coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan the ability to detect subtle hemorrhage is truly important. They may get scans on inferior scanners which might not detect the bleeding in their brain. We can pick this up years after it has happened at 3T. We also can do pre and post MPRAGE T1W images with 1mm thickness. The major problem we have in making so many super thin section images is to transmit this data to our referring physicians. We create studies with thousands of images that CANNOT be filmed.
Contrast effect is also doubled at 3T. This means in patients with renal failure we can actually scan them using 1/4 the dose which is recommended for patients who have renal failure as one way to possibly avoid Nephrogenic Systemic Sclerosis. We also recommend dialysis within 24 hours of the test. This is a potentially fatal complication of gadolinium contrast – although it is very very rare – it is seen in about 80 patients after 80 million doses of gadolinium were given. So about a 1 in 500,000 to 1 in a million chance. We do ask that any patient over the age of 65 get a renal function test – either by GFR or by BUN and Creatinine to protect our patients from this rare complication. We also use Prohance which has never been assoociated with NSF by itself. There is one case (out of 20 million doses) where another contrast agent Magnevist and Prohance was administered to the same patient and the patient developed NSF. But there are no cases where Prohance has been given alone at regular single dose or half dose. The ability to use ½ dose but get an equivalent contrast enhanced study to 1.5T full dose is therefore very helpful in all patients. WHen we introduce our 1.5T scanner we will have to give single dose for those patients. Also for orbit imaging – FAT SAT is improved at 3T. This helps us do fantastic orbit images.
By giving away a DICOM reader to our clinicians you can actually look at the images with the super high resolution and detail they were taken. When these images are filmed they lose detail. And when you have literally a thousand images to look at – you cannot film them. It would be 50 sheets of film which cost about 10 dollar a piece to make. That would be a 500 dollar surcharge for a stack of films no one would want to look at. Also it is very hard to page through the images to see the subtle lesions.
Our 3T Trio scanner is Delaware’s finest but it creates problems because it can make so many images in a short time. We generally want to convey this information to our doctors so we ask you bear with us and allow us to give you the image digitally on a CD and the accompanying reader so you can load it into any IBM based PC and look at the images in multiple planes with the ability to cross reference the images and also print them out.
Don’t you think if your brain is to be imaged it should be done on Delaware’s finest MRI scanner for brain imaging? It costs the same. It is just your knowledge which would make the difference to the patient. PLEASE CALL US IF YOU HAVE QUESTIONS 302-295-3367 www.mriconsultants.net www.bestopenmri.net