Effective in Neuro, Breast, Body, Angiography, and More

3.0 Tesla MRI has been offered in HVRA’s Mid Rockland Imaging center since January 2008. It generates twice the field strength of 1.5 T MRI, which generally results in a 40% improvement in overall signal strength, depending on the type of study. This improvement gives radiologists the option to improve spatial resolution, increase speed, or both, depending on the application.

In cases such as suspected breast cancer, radiologists use both increased speed (to capture differentiation in enhancement between the tumor and adjacent normal tissue) and increased spatial resolution to detect tiny lesions.  In the central nervous system, our radiologists have found that 3T technology significantly enhances the ability to identify small lesions, such as pituitary adenomas.

In body applications, however, our radiologists typically use its higher signal strength to gain speed, which in turn decreases imaging time. In abdominal imaging, there are times when the patient needs to hold their breath to eliminate motion artifacts from breathing. Imaging at 3T decreases the length of these breath holds.

The increased signal that is available at 3T improves overall image quality during MR angiograms, allowing better delineation of vessel anatomy, including narrowings (stenoses) and abnormal outpouchings (aneurysms). It also improves visualization of fine detail, which is useful across imaging applications but particularly useful in musculoskeletal imaging. Joel Schwartz, M.D., comments, “In selected areas, 3T has shown improvement in our diagnostic accuracy over imaging at 1.5 Tesla.” 3T MRI has significantly improved HVRA’s breast MR imaging, detection of small lesions in the central nervous system, body imaging, MR angiography, as well as resolution and signal to noise ratio in joint imaging.