UAMS Medical Center Installs Wide-Bore MRI
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A nearly 10,000-pound section of the new MRI unit is lifted by crane through a courtyard, over the cafeteria (on right) to its new home in UAMS Medical Center.
Temporary wheels are added to the bottom of the MRI unit to start moving it through a window opening and into place.
Sept. 21, 2011 | A large, 210-ton crane lifted the nearly 10,000-pound doughnut-shaped section of a new magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) unit gingerly between two buildings Sept. 19, guiding it to its new first-floor home in the UAMS Medical Center.
The UAMS Medical Center is now the first hospital in Arkansas and one of only a few in the United States to have the new unit, which has a larger opening to accommodate patients for scans. The unit, with a 1.5 Tesla strength magnet, also features a new digital imaging technology that will allow a reduced scan time.
The hospital planned for the new MRI unit in its hospital building that opened in 2009 with space for it near the trauma elevator from the ground-floor Emergency Department and just below second-floor operating rooms. The location allows patients to be moved quickly if necessary for MRI procedures. Previously patients
were taken across campus to the MRI facility
near the Cancer Institute.
“We are pleased this new MRI offers more convenience not just for our patients but also for our trauma and surgical teams,” said Richard Pierson, UAMS vice chancellor for clinical programs and UAMS Medical Center executive director.
The unit’s 70-centimeter opening, or bore, can accommodate larger patients. It is less enclosed than the typical MRI unit, with a bore size between 52-55 centimeters, said David Amerson, assistant technical director for radiology and manager for MRI imaging in the Department of Radiology.
Amerson said the unit’s table can accommodate as much as 550 pounds, compared to about 350 pounds typically.
To move the new MRI into its new home, the large window of the hospital room was removed. The crane then moved the unit, in pieces to through the opening. The doughnut-shaped magnet was moved from a truck bed about 150 feet, between the hospital building and the central building and over a temporarily vacated section of the UAMS Cafeteria. The first floor window opening was almost 20 feet off the ground.
The new unit is expected to be online within a couple weeks after it is connected and diagnostic tests are completed.
It is the seventh MRI unit at UAMS. Five MRIs are in the UAMS MRI facility while one is in the Psychiatric Research Institute. The PRI unit and one of those in the MRI facility have 3.0 Tesla strength magnets, among the most powerful available, allowing higher resolution images.