From the October 2014 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine


It’s even more challenging to accommodate an MR that is temporarily in the surgical suite. Firstly, the doors have to be big enough for the magnet to move into and out of the suite and they also have to\ be automatic and have non-friction seals and a flat threshold.

The magnets are moved into the suite by an overhead rail and its supports are tied into a structural system, which must also be RF shielded.


Since the MR has to remain connected to an exhaust ventilation system that trails into the suite, that means the doors cannot be closed when the magnet is scanning. As a result, the room where the magnet is stored also has to be RF shielded, which means more RF doors, filters and windows are needed.

All of the scenarios also require an RF floor that can be easily maintained in a sterile surgical suite such as a moisture resistant RF floor system. If that type of floor system is not installed then the floor will degrade because the amount of cleaning the surgical suite requires.

Brigham and Women’s Hospital has an intraoperative suite that is compromised of a central operating room flanked by two rooms housing an MR scanner in one and a PET/CT scanner in the other.

“We have two paradigms of workflow—the MRI scanner moves on ceiling tracks into the operating room to the patient, whereas the patient must be transferred to the PET/CT room and into the stationary scanner,” says Daniel Kacher, clinical engineer in the biomedical engineering department at the hospital.

They installed a set of ETS-Lindgren’s Intra-Operative Sliding Doors between each of the rooms. Initially, the doors were too heavy to move because of the copper and lead shielding but they solved that by making them pneumatic and developing a programmable logic controller with a touch-screen interface.

The doors have a couple safety features including a light curtain on the inside edge of the door that can detect anything preventing the door from closing including a person or piece of equipment. The hospital also partnered with ETS-Lindgren to develop interlocks so that the door between the MR room and the control room lock when the sliding door is open.

“This is critical because when the MRI scanner enters the operating mroom, the attention of the MRI technologist is required at bedside,” says Kacher. “Since the door is locked, we can remain confident that no one will inadvertently enter the MRI room, which reduces risk of adverse events with the magnet.”

Imedco’s Krachon says that iMR suites have become more popular in recent years. “It’s certainly becoming much more common to see an intraoperative suite — it’s been available for quite a few years, but the prominence of that something that I believe is increasing,” he says.

Since it’s such an expensive project, he thinks that facilities will continue to investigate its payback in the future.

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