London Health Sciences Centre has unveiled a new MRI machine for outpatient and less urgent cases, which it says will help reduce wait times.
Victoria Hospital is the first in Canada to have the MRI machine, made by Germany’s Siemens Healthineers, available for patients. The hospital says the Magnetom Free.Max 0.55T MRI arrived by flatbed truck on June 25, was lifted into place using a crane only required a total of one month to become operational. Clinical applications officially begin on July 29.
The Free.Max is funded operationally by the Ministry of Health and Ontario Health, and costs about half the price of a standard MRI machine. This will be the fifth MRI machine available for patients at the hospital.
“A traditional MRI scanner can cost upwards of about $5 million depending on the construction, the vendor, the software on all the specifications,” says Marcia Trieu, director of medical imaging at Victoria Hospital. “The Free.Max comes in a container, so it has much less construction costs as well as significant reductions in time frame from implementation.”
It’s estimated that an additional 4,000 patients will be seen every year due to the addition of this machine, with two to three patients having their scans done per hour, depending on need. The aim is to address the growing wait-list concerns in the province.
“The Free.Max has the largest board in Canada, which is great to support our patients who might be a little bit claustrophobic as well,” Trieu says. “It provides a quick solution for us to really ramp up MRI access quickly.”
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The machine is in a separate, self-contained room connected to Victoria Hospital by tunnel, which allowed for costs to be focused on the machine as opposed to the construction. To make it even more cost-effective, LHSC leased the machine through the government funding, expected to last at least three years, with hopes of indefinite access.
“We leased it with the operational funding that the government gave, and we’re actually covering technologist costs with the same money,” says Dr. Narinder Paul, department head of medical imaging at LHSC. “I think we’ve got to look at innovative ways of using taxpayers’ money to provide care in a way that isn’t just doing the same thing time and time again.”
The machine is equipped with artificial intelligence to render images faster and a larger opening with brighter lights to relieve anxiety in patients. The AI capabilities and lower-strength magnet allow for images to be captured that are generally missed with the standard MRI.
In low-field imagining, like what would be used in the Free.Max, there is potential for in-depth imaging of organs like lungs. Some patients with chronic or flaring lung concerns, like asthma, may not be able to get a full picture of what’s happening on an internal level. With the Free.Max, there’s potential for another form of imaging, not just X-rays or external evaluations.
The plan also includes pediatric imaging.
“Any parent knows that any baby or a little child doesn’t want to stay still, but if you’re in an MRI you have to,” Paul says. “We currently have to sedate them or put them under general anesthetic, but because the floor (on the Free.Max) is so big, potentially we could develop a technique where parents are cuddling a child, child settles down, they move into the magnet and you do the scanning without sedation or anesthetic.”
Trieu says pediatric imaging is not “implemented for immediate action” but is “part of our long-term plan.”
Some patients are unable to have their MRIs completed due to concerns like claustrophobia or weight limits. Studies have shown that having a wider ball (space inside the machine) reduces rates of claustrophobia. In the case of the Free.Max, the ball is 80 centimetres, which is 10 centimetres more than the normal 70.
In addition, the lower-level magnet makes this machine ideal for those with pacemakers, permanent piercings, joint replacements and tattoos.
“When they’re in a conventional MRI, they may feel a bit of heating and warmth from these factors because of the strength of the magnet,” Paul says. “This is about a third of the strength. Increasingly a lot of people are getting full-body tattoos, and since the pigment in those tattoos heats up in a conventional MRI, it should help with these patients too.”
The first non-emergent patients will be entering the machine at the start of August.