MRI

Over the years many of my patients have benefited from the use of Magnetic Resonance Imaging. It is a technology that has always wowed me with the incredible anatomic detail the scans produce and the astonishing physics of the technique being based on the magnetic manipulation of atomic particle spin.It is also a technology I have felt some affinity to as it was developed at my Alma Mater the University of Nottingham which saw the first clinical use of this technique in 1967. At Nottingham Professor Sir Peter Mansfield, Emeritus Professor of Physics led the work who together with Paul C Lauterbur won the Nobel prize for Medicine in 2003 for their pioneering work developing MRI. http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/2003/press.html 

This time though I was to have an MRI as I had been suffering for over a year with tinnitus in my left ear which had also started to disturb my sleep. Given there was a small chance a tumour may be growing on my nerve for hearing, a scan was needed. 

For such a modern and glorious technical achievement it was disappointing to learn that the hospital’s main machine was being replaced and so my scanner was a mobile one humbly housed in the back of a lorry trailer sat in a car park at the back of the hospital, and my wait was in a Portacabin temporary waiting room. Then despite my respect for the machine- when the time came to be moved in to the centre of its narrow tunnel a moment of abject panic came over me. It was even harder to restrain as I had imagined the scan taking just a few minutes only to be told there would be a sequence of scans each lasting several minutes and so I was to remain in position in the machine a full 25 minutes.Eyes shut, fervent prayer, visual imaging of seashore scenes, and mentally turning the machines clanking operation into the clackety clack of a rail journey I controlled my fears.

However, nothing can dim my admiration for the star quality of the technology and the images produced. Happily my scan has proved normal. 

Do take the time to browse some of the images of MRI scans at The Wellcome Trust Medical Photographic Library and to read about exciting developments in the field of functional MRI which literally watches the brain work. Links below: 

http://medphoto.wellcome.ac.uk/ 

http://www.fmrib.ox.ac.uk/