When a scanner is installed it has the latest technology your provider is willing to purchase. Our particular scanner was configured with the most flexible and advanced hardware and 18 channels of reception. The 18 channels means this platform is more flexible to scan almost any part of your body. As far as I know there is NO other facility that has a 18 channel Espree in Delaware and that explains why our spine images are the most detailed from this type of scanner. The Espree is the world's most spatious MR scanner. We have a breast coil, prostate coil and multiple phased array coils which can be combined with the 12 channel head and neck array. This basically lets us scan all parts of your body with our scanner.
I am more interested in letting our patients know we have the most advanced software combined with our advanced hardware. Most OPEN BORE ESPREE scanners do not have 18 channels. This lets our scanner make better images. Your doctor may not understand this. Most radiologists have never seen a multichannel MRI system. So you have to take my word for it but this really helps.
We also have BLADE which we have told you is a whole new way to scan your body with MRI and helps us to get sharp pictures. In many patients the difference is between seeing and NOT SEEING. It is an incredible advance. I was talking to a prominent physician last night and he did not know about this. I was with a group of radiologists and technologists a week ago at Hopkins and they were unaware of this advance.
We have REVEAL which lets us pick up tumors and characterize lesions as cancerous or not. This is also a true advance. Most facilities do not have this. It helps to detect smaller cancers. It makes pancreatic cancers stand out like light bulbs. If you really are concerned about finding pancreatic cancer you want the added reassurance that REVEAL was used and did not find a cancer.
We have NATIVE which lets us see your arteries without any contrast injection. This is coming. It is promised in our next software update. This is another advance because most other facilities use large injections of contrast to get your MR angiogram of your peripheral vessels. On our 3T system with 4D TRICKS or with superfast 10 second angiography sequences we use 1/2 dose Prohance. This is 1/2 to 1/3 the dose used elsewhere. Using less contrast is safer. With NATIVE we can use zero contrast. Even better.
We have SPACE which lets us scan with super thin sections. It is another Siemens exclusive sequence. We get 1mm thick sections at 1.5T.
We have BREAST MRI processing software which colorizes the image and shows the lesions with the most blood flow. I do prefer 3T Breast MRI to 1.5T but for some patients we need to have the more open bore of the 1.5T scanner which is also less claustrophobic. So... we do have an advanced INVIVO 7 channel breast coil and appropriate software. Using Siemens VIEWS software we get very reasonable breast MRI images.
We have BEAT cardiac software which also lets us do coronalry angiography without contrast injection. It is so fast that it can take images of the heart even if the patient has an arrythmia. Siemens cardaic MR software is the easiest to use and the most complete.
We have SWI (susceptibility weighted imaging). This is useful in the female pelvis for endometriosis detection and characterization and in the brain for all patients who have had head trauma and negative MRIs done elsewhere. SWI is a new technique (diferent from GRE) which lets us detect subtle blood in your brain from the old trauma. It shows up forever. However if your doctor did not know to send you to a scanner with this special sequence and your MRI physician did not perform this on you because he did not know about your severe head trauma - your brain hemorrhage can be missed. This is particularly crucial in hemorrhagic stroke. SWI is a true advance but we need our physicians to order it judiciously.
The most important thing is to have a dedicated physician who understands when to use the advanced software packages.