The 3T Trio from Siemens is one of three 3T MRI units in the world. It has the most advanced technology at 3T. The Philips Achieva 3T is also an amazing scanner. It can do diffusion tensor imaging which shows minute changes to the brain in head trauma. No other scanner in Delaware can show this as clearly and as quickly. Most other facilities have older software. They do not have BLADE to freeze motion. Our scanner is fully equipped even with cardiac pulse sequences and we hope to fine (looking for 25 years) a cardiologist interested in imaging his patients without ionizing radiation. Did you know we can see the coronary arteries? Did you know we can see silent infarcts that no other test can find? Cardiac MRI is a bright new technique but most cardiologists in Delaware seem uninterested. In NYC and Boston - teams of cardiolgoists work with radiologists to do this imaging to help patients.
BLADE motion correction is a true game changer. If you provider has Siemens 1.5T equipment without BLADE then you know they are being thrifty. YOU ABSOLUTELY NEED BLADE. Siemens has an advanced 32 second coronary artery sequence. You can get your coronary arteries in a breathold. The GE 3T MR850 system is also not installed anywhere close to Delaware. The version (Propeller) of motion freezing software similar to BLADE on the GE system only works in the head. On the Siemens it works all over the body. The same is true of the Philip Achieva MultiVANE technology. The rest of the body moves with respiration and peristalsis. 3T MRI is the best way to scan a small child. The second best is the 1.5T Espree - which has BLADE motion compensation and also is so short that a mother can hold her child while being scanned. We also do our studies without anesthesia. . Also, at A.I. DuPont hospital they do anesthesia on all patients, even teenagers. We feel that instead a facility as ours designed to calm the patient will do just as well and is safer since we only sedate patients when we need to. We will give the patients a chance at doing their study without sedation. 3T is the best MRI for many applications. We can do fantastic MR angiography at 3T which breath hold times of a few (4-9) seconds. On my 1.5T scanner we had to have the patient hold their breath for 30 seconds. We now get better pictures at 3T with only a 9 second breathold. We also have TRICKS to allow rapid imaging of the feet and wrist vessels.
We have music in all of our rooms... and virtual beach scenes or any scenes you might choose for yourself. For children we can project cartoons. For adults we can give you a beach scene. We can also project movies in the waiting room to calm down children. They simply bring their favorite DVD and they can calm down or take oral sedation and fall asleep. Then we place them in the scanner for the best imaging possible.
In the scan room we have one method to display video. A LCD projector which projects onto a screen you can watch while being scanner. In our sister scanner - the WIDE OPEN 1.5T MRI we have an LCD TV in the ceiling. You can watch TV during 60% of your studies on the OPEN machine. We offer functional MRI studies as well to researchers or also administered by the No-Lie MRI company. They have a technology which lets them see when you are trying to deceive the questioner. Please see their website at: NoLieMRI.com
3T lets us get fantastic brain images and spectroscopy on our LEWES MR system. It is estimated that in MS patients about 37% more lesions might be seen at 3T than with lower field strengths. In my experiuence in the past two and half years we sometimes see up to 300% more lesions. This truly makes a difference. Choose the best. MR Spectroscopy is not reimbursed by some insurance companies - so we offer an inexpensive out of pocket price - 500 dollars. There is no facility I know which charges this little for a technique which tell us about the chemistry of a brain tumor. It can find alzherimers disease due to alterations in myoinositol in the brain. It was considered the most promising new technique in the brain but people stopped using this about years ago. My friend Brian Ross Phd at the Huntington institute has done most of the clinical research on this and you should call him and talk to him. He is a wonderful man. And interested in helping people find out about alzheimers early.
We also can scan at super high resolution. This helps us image the inner ear, hippocampus and posterior fossa. Because our scanner is so fast and the fat saturation is superior, we are able to pick up subtle orbit and cavernous sinus lesions which can be missed by other scanners. We picked up two ery rare cases on our machine in the past two years doing super high resolution orbit studies. In the past this was a very hard diagnosis at 1.5T. At 3T we see these subtle lesions better. If you have an orbit related problem with double vision or pain behind your eye. If you do not use 3T - you are short changing yourself.
3T gives us the best musculoskeletal studies as well. The doctors at Hopkins insist on the quality of 3T. This is because we can do thinner sections (2mm) with quadruple the resolution than most other scanners. We can routinely scan at 1 to 3mm slice thickness and 512x512 matrix.
MRI is really neat because it uses no ionizing radiation. It is therefore inherently safer than xray based studies. Recently many studies have shown that medical xrays are beginning to cause excess cancers in children and adults. Children are twice as susceptible to radiation as adults. 10 CT scans has been equated to exposure to the atomic bomb at Hiroshima (average dose). This radiation causes lymphoma, leukemia and thyroid cancers. It also can cause breast cancer but it would not be possble to prove in any given case your cancer was from medical xrays. Positron Emission Tomography is also done with the use of high energy particles. In fact positrons are not easily stopped even by lead shielding. MRI uses no such ionizing radiation and is considered safe and not likely to cause mutations or cancer. The rate of cancers caused by medical imaging is rising! Children are twice as sensitive to this radiation. A recent screening study in cancer patietns found that total body screening with MRI was superior to PET. Using REVEAL MRI found 97% of liver tumors compared to only 82% -85% with CT. Non contrast MRI was about 85% sensitive. So non contrast MRI without REVEAL was equal to contrast enhanced CT. CT also has the risk of high radiation dose and contrast induced nephropathy - which strikes 5%-38% of patients depending on their age and kidney function status. An informed patient is our best customer.