Week Four!

Hi guys!

So in week 4 of SRP, similar to last week, I spent a lot more time with the MR techs than the radiologists. However, this week the MR techs scanned a MRE which is a specific type of MRI that combines MRI imaging with sound waves to create a visual map which shows the stiffness of body tissues.  Interestingly, MRE was invented at Mayo Clinic and is available there and at various other centers. Just as doctors feel around the abdomen to check for rigidness, the visual map of the MRE shows the hardness of certain areas. Blue signifies that the area is soft tissue while a red would mean severe stiffness and green would indicate an in-between of the two colors. An MRI scan is shown on the left and the MRE scan is on the right.

Knowing the stiffness of tissues is important because it is useful in diagnosis of a patient as a excessive stiffness would indicate disease or a tumor. MRE’s are usually used in diagnosis of liver cancer and today we compared a patient’s MRE from before and after treatment and the difference in hardness shown on the before and after MRE’s showed a dramatic change! The amount of stiffness or “red” on the scan had drastically decreased.

When I went in today to the clinic, I was hoping to witness a prostate scan which is what I’m specifically researching within MRI’s but the previous patients’ scans had all been delayed and I had to leave for work by the time of the actual prostate scan came around. However I did see a spinal scan and a breast scan in its place and learned more MRI terminology. The first thing I had to freshen up on was the different planes in which the scans are shown: sagittal, coronal, and axial.

These three planes are often abbreviated and written in the series of protocols to give the technicians an idea of how the patient is being scanned. Few more terms which I came to learn the meaning of were T1 and T2. T1 and T2 are imaging techniques that differ in the way liquid and fat in the body are shown on scans. In T1 scans, compartments with liquid such as cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) will appear dark and tissues with high fat content will show up bright whereas in T2 scans, the liquid will appear bright and the fat will be dark. You can see below the contrast between the two.

Learning the new terms certainly helped me understand how the series in protocols worked and how it ties into my project and it is something I will delve into in my next blog post! Stay tuned till then!