Patients at the Queen Elizabeth II Heath Sciences Centre have access to the most sophisticated MRI machine in Atlantic Canada.
MRI technology is used to diagnose and monitor treatments for a number of different diseases and conditions - such as heart disease, brain tumours, epilepsy, and multiple sclerosis just to name a few.
The 3T system, available at the QEII, is improving diagnosis, research, and patient care.
“Other MRIs and the other MRIs in the province are 1.5 Tesla magnets. 3T simply means the field strength of the magnet, the core of the magnet is twice as much as the field strength of the standard 1.5 magnets,” says Dr. David Barnes, chief of diagnostic imaging.
Barnes says when you increase field strength, you gain what is known as signal to noise ratio.
“It really means that you just get a better image and you can use that signal and the noise to improve a number of aspects of the imaging,” says Barnes.
For example, spatial resolution, the images produce finer images with smaller bits of detail.
“Trying to find epileptic foci in patients, sometimes they're very small and the changes are very small, so having that improved spatial resolution can help you find those abnormalities a little bit easier,” says Barnes.
Dr. Barnes says the ability to better image prostate cancer has been one of the biggest impacts of the 3T machine.
“You can see smaller and smaller tumors, so you may be able to see a tumor at 3T using our new magnet that we might not have been able to see at 1.5.”
Dr. Steven Beyea is the scientific lead of the QEII’s biotic lab, which houses the 3T MRI. He says this technology also opens the door for research and education opportunities.
“In health research, when we're competing for those scarce research dollars, it's not good enough to be competitive with our neighbours. We're competing against the world, and you can only be competitive if you have those state of the art imagine technologies that allow us to do that really cutting edge research,” says Beyea.
The 3T MRI is currently being used across a wide variety of areas including new cancer and mental health treatments, and the research potential is attracting a lot of attention.
“We have examples out there of researchers who were at Stanford University, who have left Stanford and come here to the QEII and the reason is because they knew they could come back home, raise their families here, come back to Nova Scotia, while at the same time having access to the exact same state of the art imagine technologies that they would have had at a place like Stanford University,” says Beyea.
Aside from improved imaging and better diagnosis, Dr. Barnes says patients are benefitting from shorter wait times. Patients who would have been scanned using the 1.5T MRI are now getting their MRI on the 3T machine, which frees up time for other patients on the 1.5T machines.
