Photo of the Week: Advanced Technology Debuts

Ultrasounds and CT scanners don’t provide the resolution required to pinpoint the location and detailed physical characteristics of a tumor. MRIs provide much higher resolution, but the high magnetic field of an MRI scanner provides a challenge in the operating room environment, in which surgical instruments can be attracted to the magnet. Also, moving a patient under general anesthesia to an MRI in another room during surgery is not ideal.

Having these kinds of state-of-the-art and cutting edge technologies that help us to do our jobs most effectively as neurosurgeons, Moffitt will be better equipped than any other major hospital doing brain tumor surgery.

Michael Vogelbaum, M.D., Chief, Neurosurgery

The iMRI allows the surgeon to conduct intraoperative imaging without moving the patient. Instead, the MRI scanner glides into the operating room on rails from a centralized diagnostic room. The operating room instruments and patient are secured before imaging is performed. Once images are obtained, the MRI recedes into the diagnostic imaging room and the surgery can continue safely.

 The 360 video below is of one operating room at Moffitt McKinley Hospital equipped with the iMRI technology.