“Now, we can do state-of-the-art imaging on obese patients.”ģT’s speed also lets Bohlman image bowel loops. “We’ve never had a way to image these people,” Bohlman says. The Verio has a 70-centimeter bore that can accommodate patients up to 500 pounds. Johns Hopkins Bayview also plans on using 3T scanner to image overweight patients from the facility’s bariatric center. It’s essential to image the cartilage with 3T to ensure that it is viable for implantation. Bohlman says this is an up-and-coming field in the United States that has been fairly well adopted in Europe.
Instead of doing knee replacements, patients can have their own cartilage grafted. The facility’s cartilage replacement clinic offers another potential use for 3T. “It’s better than 1.5 and is very sensitive for detecting early cancers.” “I think going to be a huge growing area in 3T,” Bohlman says. The facility also imaged its first breast. “It’s pretty phenomenal what we’re able to do,” he says. The neurosurgeons were very impressed with the color images of the fiber tracks in Bohlman’s brain. So far, just body imaging specialist Mark Bohlman, MD, and other volunteers have been imaged. Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center in Baltimore, Md., recently installed the Magnetom Verio 3T MR scanner from Siemens Medical Solutions. “That’s a much bigger chunk than a lot of centers. ” The group has almost tripled its abdominal and pelvic MR scans for a total of 7,200, or almost 15 percent of its business. “We’ve probably attracted patients who we wouldn’t have attracted. While some of that growth would have happened regardless of having 3T, “I think 3T has been responsible for a significant chunk of that growth,” he says. The group has seen a 25 percent jump in MR volume over the past year. “The more I use it, the more I like it.” The images look better and he says he feels more confident with his diagnoses, whether he’s finding something abnormal or confirming a normal finding. “To be honest, I wish I could scan all patients on 3T,” Stambaugh says. Two-thirds of the scans are neurology studies, while a third are a combination of body and musculoskeletal imaging.
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“It took a little time for the radiologists to figure out how to optimize the MR protocols to take the best advantage of what the magnet can do.” But by the end of the summer, neurology, musculoskeletal and body imaging were in line. Stambaugh says the installation went very well and the system was up and running right on schedule. The practice is positioned in an area of Pugent Sound “where we were really hoping to attract subspecialty MR referrals, particularly for neurology, but also for musculoskeletal applications.” Adding 3T MRI puts the group in a position “to compete for growing subspecialty MRI.” MR imaging is going to become even more of a routine form of imaging than it is now.”
Since installing a Signa HDx 3T scanner from GE Healthcare in January 2007, Lloyd Stambaugh, MD, of Evergreen Radia in Kirkland, Wash., can now obtain additional information “that you just can’t get with CT. Greater resolution and faster patient throughput are helping the modality expand its applications and gain even more adoring fans. It’s not often that a technology drives clinicians to gush, using terms like “phenomenal,” “fantastic” and “exciting.” But 3T MR is doing just that.