Press releases

Yale-New Haven Hospital news release
Release date: June 29, 2005
Media contact: Mark D'Antonio, (203) 688-2493

New scanners put Yale-New Haven Hospital on the forefront of MRI

Two powerful new MRI scanners recently installed at Yale-New Haven Hospital are so fast they cut scan time to minutes or even seconds in some cases. The knocking noise that rattles many patients is reduced so they can relax and listen to music during the scan.

Most importantly, the upgraded MRIs produce precise, high resolution pictures that are already helping doctors determine the best treatment for everything from common joint problems to life-threatening tumors, and see how strokes and some psychiatric disorders are reflected in the functioning of the brain.

"This upgrade puts us on the cutting edge of medical technology," said Jeffrey Weinreb, MD, chief of MRI at Yale-New Haven Hospital and professor of radiology for the Yale School of Medicine. "It puts us in a better position to advance science and provide our patients with the highest, most advanced and best level of care."

Yale-New Haven Hospital performed almost 16,000 MRI scans in 2004, and expects to do many more in 2005. The new scanners, along with a major renovation and expansion underway in Yale-New Haven's MRI department, give the hospital the capability to offer the most advanced MRI imaging in the northeast.

Weighing more than a ton and shaped like a giant doughnut, a powerful magnet is an important component in an MRI system, which works by creating a magnetic field, sending radio waves through the body and then measuring the response with a computer. "The more powerful the magnetic field, the more signal can be retrieved from the body and the more potential you have for creating images faster and with finer detail," Dr. Weinreb said.

The strengths of magnets are rated using a unit of measure called a Tesla. Yale-New Haven Hospital's new magnets are in the 1.5 and 3.0 Tesla ranges - powerful enough to turn watches, stethoscopes and mop buckets into projectiles, erase the magnetic encoding on credit cards and cause some cardiac pacemakers to malfunction.

For patients, the strong magnets mean quicker scanning times, making it easier for those with health issues that make it difficult to lay still or hold their breath. The speed also allows technologists to capture images of the heart in real time, an improvement over older technology that involves taking multiple images and putting them together. A new technique, only available on these new types of MRI scanners, can even eliminate motion on the images when patients cannot hold their head still because of tremors.

Reporters: For more information on this release, contact Mark D'Antonio, (203) 688-2493.

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Last revised: June 30, 2005 (mv)

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