by
Carol Ko, Staff Writer | October 30, 2013
From the October 2013 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine
Shoulders are an especially challenging part of the body because of their location in relation to the MR scanner’s magnetic field. As the body enters the bore, the quality of the signal diminishes the further away the body gets from the center of the magnetic field — in other words, on the outer sides of the body, where the shoulders are.
“You have to be careful about the physical structure of the coil,” says Beck.
“If there is innovation in the future, it will be eight channel coils in orthopedic use,” says Walker. “The biggest market for MRI in the U.S., aside from neuro imaging, is for orthopedic issues including hip, shoulder and knee replacement.”
Flex points
Flexible coils have also generated more interest lately among budget-conscious hospitals because of their versatility, according to Steve Nichols, COO of NeoCoil. The advantages of having more versatile coils are clear: they’re able to fulfill different functions, eliminating or at least reducing the need to buy dedicated coils for specific parts of the body.
Though flexible/multipurpose coils have been around for a while, a new engineering design that consolidates all the electronics onto the coil antennae instead of a separate interface has resulted in improved image quality.
“Fewer plugs, fewer components to plug in and plug out, and it’s a little less complex to manufacture,” explains Nichols.
A newer kind of flexible coil may be on the horizon as well. Randal Jones, president of ScanMed, hints that the biggest trend he sees for the near future is wearable coil arrays with a large increase in channel count.
“The flexible coils on the market right now are only partly flexible,” explains Jones. “It’s on a rigid base of some sort, but some part of it is flexible. It’s exciting to think of a product line that does more than just semiflex around the anatomy.”
When pressed for specifics on whether he knew of any new products along these lines, Jones was tight-lipped, though he was happy to speculate what such a product would look like. “Maybe we can even use the word elastic to describe it. Elastic is unheard of because it’s hard to stretch metal, and what’s inside coils is metal conductors. Pretty exciting stuff,” he says.
DOTmed Registered MRI Coils Companies
Names in boldface are Premium Listings.
Domestic
Michaelle Serrano, Oxford Instruments Service, LLC, FL
DOTmed 100
Kimberly Wilridge, TCS Match, FL
Randy Cox, MRI Technical Services, Inc., GA
Wes Solmos, Creative Foam Medical Systems, IN
DOTmed Certified
Jeff Rogers, Medical Imaging Resources Inc., MI
DOTmed 100
Andrew Beck, MR Instruments Incorporated, MN
Steve Nichols, NeoCoil LLC, WI
Brian James, North American MRI Parts, CA
Kevin Collins, Signature MRI, CA
Sunny Tabrizi, Sound Imaging, CA
Randall Jones, Resonance Innovations LLC, NE
DOTmed Certified
Edward Sloan Sr., Ed Sloan & Associates, TN
Trent Howell, MIS, GA
Ronen Bechor, ElsMed Ltd. & Relaxation, Inc., FL
DOTmed Certified
DOTmed 100
Bill Erbes, DirectMed Parts, CA
DOTmed Certified
DOTmed 100
Marshall Shannon, Image Technology Consulting, LLC, TX
DOTmed Certified
DOTmed 100
International
Mahmood ElHoor, RBMEng, Jordan
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