iMRI: A New Era to Operation Rooms

iMRI Operation Room

iMRI is Intra-operative Magnetic Resonance Imaging, this means that MRI high-resolution images are being taken during surgery and thus the iMRI will be placed in an operation room. The operation room that contains an iMRI is often called hybrid operation room and is a new expression used to define this new emerging and needed specialized non-conventional operation rooms.

               Why iMRI so important?

It is far more important it is more like a need to neurosurgeons as with the aid of iMRI they will be able “to create accurate pictures of the brain that guide them in removing brain tumors and other abnormalities during operations.” from myoclinic.org. These high resolution pictures will reduce the need for other future operation on the patient as it will aid surgeons to remove all the tumors in the same surgery as they can see the tumor during the surgery, thus raising chances of success of a surgery and at the same time reducing multi surgery risk on the same patient.

               Now one of the most obstacles to the spread of iMRI is the high cost of such system and the need for specific building design. One of the solutions is the placement of the iMRI between two operation rooms AKA “Dual Room” is a buffer zone that can be sealed from both sides as shown in the figure below.

Dual Operation Room Design for an iMRI  

 This procedure will increase the economic efficiency of iMRI and thus make it more appealing to hospital administrators. But even with this iMRI remains a complicated transformation to be applied to existing operation rooms, and the construction of new operation rooms that is exclusively suited for such application will be more favorable. Some leading companies in iMRI innovation are Siemens and BrainLAB. Whereas hospitals that already have iMRI in their OR are very few we might think of Johns Hopkins Hospital as one of the leading hospitals to have such a great medical innovation.

In conclusion, we are glad to have such a great medical breakthrough to aid in healing many patients suffering from tumors that might have been impossible to be removed successfully without iMRI but we are looking forward to having such technologies to be widespread among more medical centers and hospitals around the world. Furthermore, there is the iCT that is almost the same idea serving the same noble goal.