Super scanner accelerates research in Geelong

To better understand the heads, shoulders, knees and musculoskeletal woes of patients in the Geelong and greater referring region, Epworth Medical Imaging early this year took part in a pilot program that would clinically validate a breakthrough magnetic-resonance (MR) imaging scanner.
Higher-res, faster, more patient-friendly scans provided by the GE SIGNA Architect are already enabling this private, not-for-profit new hospital, opened in mid-2016, to expand on its reputation for premium imaging, and participate in world-leading research.

The competitive edge suits Geelong’s sporting profile, and the ambitions of Epworth Medical Imaging’s clinical director Associate Professor Pramit Phal of the University of Melbourne’s Department of Radiology, who specialises in neuroradiology.

“It’s an amazing opportunity to be the first in this region with this technology,” says Phal. “One of the exciting things with this collaboration is really tapping into the extensive research possibilities with GE.”

The SIGNA Architect’s 48-channel head coil has an adaptable fit that can accommodate heads and necks of all sizes.

He describes Geelong as “a fairly football-centric city and says, “I’m very interested in the head-injury space and a lot of GE developments have come from GE’s work in that area—the 48-channel head coil for example, has been a great hardware acquisition with this system.”

The SIGNA Architect’s 48-channel brain array is unique among MR scanners, allowing a significant improvement in image quality at shorter scan times; and also enabling people with larger heads to be scanned.

The physical stature of many footballers, for example, can be accommodated by the Architect’s new larger brain coil and by its 70cm-wide bore—the “tunnel” in which patients must be placed for internal body images to be generated.

Senior MRI radiographer at Epworth Medical Imaging, Brad Kennedy, says the larger coil for brain imaging represents a fraction of the Architect’s new capabilities. The system that receives and processes signals is also more efficient: “For the lumbar spine we’re using the same coil as in the previous scanner, and we’re getting a much higher signal-to-noise ratio on bigger patients; we’ve gone from 4mm slices to 3.5mm slices in the lumbar area, while also increasing our spatial resolution in roughly the same sequence time,” he says.

A new suite of productivity software, collectively known as SIGNA Works, supplied to Epworth Medical Imaging as part of the pilot program, helps to streamline radiographers’ workflows. Important to their goals, it also provides exceptional contrast between tissue types, and motion-correction capabilities that further refine the clarity of MR imaging.

The new acquisition’s faster scan times and motion-correction software mean Epworth Medical Imaging is attracting referrals for a wider range of patients, including people with claustrophobia, or who can’t stay still long enough for conventional scanners to capture a clear image—babies, or the cognitively impaired or disorientated, for example.

Features such as the less confining 70cm bore, GE SilentWorks (the company’s most advanced noise-reducing technology to date, which cuts that characteristic MR thumping to the level of ambient noise), and the new ability to scan patients starting at the feet also contribute to the machine’s patient-friendliness.

Plus the “excellent homogeneity” of Architect images, says Phal, means injured wrists can be scanned in a natural hands-by-your-sides position—where previously patients had to adopt what’s known as the Superman pose, with arms extended above their heads, putting their wrists at the centre of the scanning frame, “which can be quite uncomfortable”, he says.

“This is the first time we’ve trialled a full-blown hardware system so far from the factory in Waukesha, Wisconsin in the US,” says Joshi George Cherayath, MRI product specialist at GE Healthcare, who nabbed one of only five pilot systems for his Geelong client (two were piloted by GE in the US, one went to Norway, the other to Korea).

Cherayath saw clear benefits in partnering with a new Australian regional hospital intent on working at the cutting edge of medical imaging, and with strong links to universities such as its close neighbour, Deakin University.

The excitement that accompanies using new technology has brought Epworth Medical Imaging’s clinicians and GE scientific and research staff into constant dialogue beyond the initial three-month validation period.

These images were generated from a single scan.

Together, the service and GE teams are exploring SIGNA Architect’s potential. “We’ve regularly had visits from one of GE’s MR scientists down here, to look at the diffusion tensor imaging,” says Kennedy. DTI is a refinement of MRI that tracks the pathways of white matter—the millions of fibres that carry nerve signals between brain and spinal cord, and between different regions of the brain’s grey matter.

“We’re getting multi-slice DTIs down from a 30-minute scan time to a 10-minute scan time, and the images are higher resolution!” enthuses Kennedy.

Radiologists and referring doctors appreciate the system’s highly detailed images, which can more clearly visualise soft tissue and assist in better managing patient conditions.

And this scanner is something of a dream come true for radiographers. The speed and clarity of Architect-generated images means, “You can try things that you never thought of before because they just took too long,” says Kennedy.