Meridian gets 'high-field' open MRI

By Brad Carlson

IDAHO BUSINESS REVIEW

Advanced Open Imaging spent three months – and $2.5 million – preparing its 3,500-square-foot Meridian office.

Now Advanced offers “Idaho’s first high-field, open MRI in SilverStone Corporate Center, southeast of the Eagle Road interchange with Interstate 84.

Open MRIs have been around 10 to 15 years, and have proven popular among people seeking an alternative to the more confining tube-like enclosure first used in the early 1980s. Both types of MRIs provide magnetic-resonance images of the body’s insides, but the tube systems are known for producing higher-resolution images.

“High-field” open MRIs, which use a stronger magnetic field than traditional open MRI modes, are the most recent development in the field.

Advanced Open Imaging uses a Hitachi Altaire model, which Operations Director Drew Taylor said cost about $1.75 million – not including $100,000 to prepare a copper-shielded room. From January to April, the company reinforced the floor with concrete, set the device and cooled it with liquid helium, applied power to it so that it would become a magnet.

“Once it came up to a magnetic field, we then shut the power off and then started shimming and tuning the machine. That process takes six weeks.”

“We thought, seven years ago, that this machine wasn’t even able to be done, from a physics standpoint,” Taylor said.

Dr, Diane Newton, radiologist and medical director, said major MRI equipment vendors “have recognized there is a need for better-quality open systems because of the number of people who have difficulty” in enclosed MRIs, she said. Open MRIs have been popular among larger people and claustrophobic people, she added.

Open MRIs represent a growing segment of the market, and, “I think the number will increase with the systems now available,” she said.

Taylor added that the open systems make it easier for patients to hold still – a major factor in image quality.

But closed systems – with their stronger magnetic fields – have been preferred for precise uses such as neurosurgical applications, early stroke detection, and evaluating the spine and certain joints, Newton said. Of the Boise area’s roughly 10 MRI centers, six use closed systems, she said.

The high-field open MRI offers image quality similar to a closed system, she said.

“The only thing we can’t do is very specialized spectroscopy, a very small (market) segment,” said Newton, who worked at Gem State Radiology previously. “That requires an even higher magnetic field strength, for very specific indications.”

Taylor said the Seattle-based owners of Advanced Open Imaging, who operate a similar clinic in Lynnwood, Wash., chose the freeway-adjacent Meridian site so the business could draw from Ontario, Ore., to Mountain Home. The clinic is not affiliated with any medical practices but aims to be accessible to all, he added.

Newton said Advanced, which employs five, may add another radiologist and another modality later, such as a CT scanner, depending on demand.