MRI Metal Detector Blog

I was tremendously honored to have been asked to give a presentation to the ISMRM / SMRT MR Safety Workshop which was held a couple weeks ago in Lisbon, Portugal. Mine was actually the second-to-last of two days of back-to-back-to-back presentations and I was worried that all of my content would have been covered by prior presenters. I mean MR safety is a pretty broad area, but still, having about 30+ notable MR authorities from around the world go before me, would my material be so well-worn before it was even my turn that my presentation would push the entire audience into a boredom-induced coma?

Turns out that I needn’t have worried…

ISMRM is a fabulous organization, but the long form of the organization’s name (the International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine) gives a bit of indication about their perspective. The conference wasn’t broadly about MR safety (at least before they got to my presentation), it was about implants, dynamic field affects and heating… essentially safety at or inside the bore of the MRI.

• There was no discussion about staffing numbers or qualifications.
• There was no discussion of screening techniques or their effectiveness.
• There was no mention of access restrictions or 4-zone implementation.
• There wasn’t anything about whether or not MRI exams are actually getting any safer for patients… nothing provided as a metric as to whether the workshop’s efforts were providing any positive feedback to the MR industry.
• And certainly there was nothing about ferromagnetic detection.

Despite the fact that I was invited to speak on my perspective on MR safety issues before I joined Mednovus, a company which manufactures ferromagnetic detection (FMD) systems, and had planned on speaking about the technology, I thought that anything I said on the subject might be viewed as being motivated by personal financial interests. So I actually said nothing to the group about FMD. Instead I presented information on the official record of MRI accident rates in the US from the FDA MAUDE database over the last several years…

And I talked about how the physical design of the MRI suite can mitigate a number of risks that are inherent (and growing) in the MRI environment.

As MRI scanners are made more and more powerful, the projectile / missile effect increases. As we use MRI for older and more acutely ill patients, the risks associated with medical device contraindications grows. As we grow the interventional applications for MRI, we bring more people and more stuff into the MRI suite, increasing all sorts of risks. As the financial pressures increase the demand for greater throughput, the time allotted for preparation and pre-screening of patients may suffer, if not protected.

In short, the clinical, financial and technical forces on MRI are all combining to ratchet-up the risks in the MRI environment. MRI has a well-earned reputation as the safest and most informative diagnostic tool available, but that reputation is eroding and is at risk of being catapulted backward when another high-profile fatality is splashed across CNN.

I am deeply honored to have been asked to present at the ISMRM MR Safety Workshop and I hope to have many more opportunities to share my thoughts and experience with the group. My opinion, however, is that we’ve got a long way to go to get the professional, regulatory and accrediting bodies to address MRI safety in the holistic way that is necessary to bring about the substantial change needed to protect both MRI patients and providers.