Hospital’s MRI goes beyond state-of-the-art
Saturday; July 03, 2004
By: John Walker, Shelbyville News
More powerful, faster, roomier, quieter. It
sounds like the accolades sung about the latest luxury sport car.
In this case, those adjectives are being
used to describe Major Hospital’s new MRI unit - one of only about 10 such
units in the country - which uses technology not found on any other MRI in
the state.
“This is a very nice machine,” said
radiologic technologist Greg Combs, sounding like a driver behind the wheel
of a new Ferrari, and sometimes grinning like one, too.
Combs was using the hospital’s new machine
to examine a patient’s wrist on the day The Shelbyville News visited Major
Hospital recently, his face in the darkened control room of the MRI unit in
the hospital’s basement lit by the glow of images taken from three angles -
above, from the side and lengthwise - that appeared on the computer screen
in front of him.
Hospitals use Magnetic Resonance Imaging to
create digital pictures of the interior of the human body to diagnose
ailments. MRI units use a powerful magnet that actually realigns the water
molecule s in the body to produce the images, Combs explained.
“MRI, doesn’t use radiation. That’s one of
the plusses for the patient,” he said.
Major Hospital’s $1.2 million Toshiba
“Vantage” MRI unit, online for about one month, has a magnet five times more
powerful than the open-sided MRI it replaced and about 15,000 times more
powerful than the Earth’s magnetic field, he said.
The magnet is so strong that hospital staff
at all levels, from nurses and technicians to the cleaning crews, receive
special training to work around the MRI unit. Any metal object that can be
magnetized would become a potentially lethal projectile if it got too close
to the machine, which is shielded by thick steel in the walls, floor and
ceiling of the room where it’s kept and is never turned off because of the
length of time - not to mention the $5,000 cost - to start it up again.
However, the more powerful the magnet, the
better the image.
“You get so much more information off this
magnet than with the old magnet,” said Mona Bernard, director of radiology
for Major Hospital.
Besides making better pictures, the new MRI
unit is almost twice as fast as the old one. An exam that used to take 45
minutes now takes just 25 to 30 minutes, another plus for the patient, Combs
said.
The Vantage is what’s known as a
“short-bore” MRI; that is, the tunnel which the patient enters for the exam
on this machine is just 1.5 meters, about five feet. That helps eliminate
that claustrophobic feeling some patients experience undergoing an MRI exam,
because their entire body is not inside the machine, he said.
Besides being short, the bore is also 65
centimeters - more than 25 inches - in diameter. In other words, roomy.
“This is the shortest bore out there, the
biggest bore out there and the quietest,” said Rick Bennett, customer
engineer technical coordinator for Toshiba America Medical Systems Inc., the
manufacturer.
It’s the quietest thanks to “Pianissimo.”
That musical term, which means to play very
softly, is what Toshiba calls the noise-reduction technology that is on the
Vantage. It is the only machine which such technology in the state of
Indiana, Bennett said.
Pianissimo results in a 90 percent drop in
the noise level of the MRI. With the old machine, you could hear it way
down the hall in the doctor’s offices during a patient exam, he said.
Now, Combs noted, he can play music for the
patients while they’re being examined.
In a plus for doctors as well as the
patients, the digital MRI pictures can be put into a computer database and
become part of a patient’s electronic medical file.
A physician can access the patient’s entire
medial history, including the MRI images, securely over the Internet from
anywhere using software developed for OpenMed Midwest LLC, a company started
by Major Hospital, said Bob Carmony, who does marketing for Major Hospital.
“Very few hospitals have that,” he said.
Content ©2004 The Shelbyville News
Tuesday
January 20, 2004
SHELBYVILLE, INDIANA
MAJOR HOSPITAL BREAKS GROUND ON CANCER
Shelbyville, Indiana: Major
Hospital, in association with Indiana University Radiation Oncology, broke
ground Monday for a state-of-the-art cancer and outpatient radiology center.
This facility will offer a comprehensive cancer treatment center including
medical oncology, hematology and radiation therapy in a beautiful, home-like
setting. Additionally, the center will feature an outpatient radiology office
with an initial offering of radiography and eventually providing MRI, CT and
PET services.
The facility is located
in Intelliplex, one of Indiana’s Certified Technology Parks, and will use the
park’s advanced telecommunications network to communicate with central Indiana
physicians on a real time basis.
Patients of the cancer
center receiving radiation treatments will have access to the only community
hospital based linear accelerator in Central Indiana featuring Intensity
Modulated Radiation Therapy (IMRT). IMRT has been called the most significant
breakthrough in radiation treatments in the past 3 decades. This cutting edge
technology allows the radiation treatment to target the tumor with a higher
dose of radiation while limiting the exposure to surrounding healthy tissue.
President and CEO of
Major Hospital, Anthony Lennen, states, “ Today we are living with cancer not
dying of cancer. Our new cancer center will provide patients and families the
complete range of cancer care in a world class facility.”
Contractor Mayer & Najem,
based in Fishers Indiana, has been awarded the bid for the initial
construction phase of the 46,000 square foot facility.
For further information on
the Cancer Center, please connect to Intelliplex where the Cancer Center will
be located.
http://www.intelliplex.org/cancer_ctr.phtml
Intelliplex Groundbreaking Ceremony
The city, county and Major Hospital put their best shovels forward Tuesday, September 30, 2003 during a groundbreaking ceremony for the 140 acre life science Intelliplex park west of State Road 9 and north of Interstate 74. The park was officially certified as a high-tech park, the third in the state of Indiana.
“This ceremony marks the most important occasion in the lives of every citizen in Shelby County,” said Shelbyville attorney, Lee McNeely, the master of ceremonies, marking the occasion with cooperation from the public and private sector. Intelliplex is about to become a reality.”
Intelliplex, a joint city, county and Major Hospital effort, will open with the hospital’s cancer care center, a four acre satellite campus of Indiana Wesleyan University, a Purdue University Technical Assistance Program (TAP) office and two computer related business – OpenMed Midwest and Intelliplex Data Solutions – as tenants.
“It’s great to be in your county for what is a very significant announcement that I think sets the tone where Shelbyville and Shelby County are headed,” Governor Joe Kernan said. “We in state government, because of legislation that was passed (last year) have created a mechanism whereby local communities can control their own destinies and look at opportunities for economic development and take advantage of this tool called a certified technology park.” Certification allows part of the taxes generated in the park to be reinvested to help improve the park.
“On behalf of all in state government, I want to say congratulations to the community. As we go forward from here, we will continue to be your partners in any way that we can,” Kernan said before presenting a plaque marking the park’s special status to Mayor Zerr.
“It opens the door for many positive developments which can give Shelbyville a wonderful identity, to say nothing of the high-paying job opportunities that will become available at the site,” Mayor Zerr noted. “This is an exciting time to live in Shelbyville. The hope in the future years is that Shelbyville will continue to grow and prosper.”
Purdue University Vice Provost Don Gentry offered his view on what he deemed an historic occasion. “Today we are marking a major step in Indiana, Shelbyville and Purdue University’s history because it is through the growth and support of technology companies that we grow the future of the economy for the state of Indiana,” he explained. “Purdue is excited about being a partner in all of this because of the possibilities it brings for this community. We’re even more excited about what this does to the state of Indiana, because it has been models like this that have taken hold in Indiana”.
“Businesses that start in parks such as Intelliplex are twice as successful as those that start on their own,” Gentry noted, “and 84 percent of them stay in the local area.”
For Major Hospital CEO and President, Tony Lennen, the day was two years in the making. “I know in my heart we can make this park an example for the state,” Lennen said. It is our hope that this day marks a new beginning in the economic life of every citizen of our county,” McNeely concluded. “We should be proud of how Major Hospital and the city and county government officials have contributed to this point. We should also be proud of the partners that have joined us in this journey. What we have begun here in Shelby County will hopefully be the cornerstone of an economic revitalization that has been long awaited.”
For more information on Intelliplex, please visit our web site at: www.intelliplex.org
