MRI Machines

It's coming off the gradient magnets, usually. I hope all is ok and you won't receive any nasty diagnosis from the session.

Pulsed gradient coils. These are "small" 3-axis coils that sweep a gradient field across your innards, modulating the nuclear resonant frequencies of your molecules to produce the spatial resolution. These are generally water-cooled, with ballpark 20 KW constant-current drivers per axis, playing all sorts of weird waveforms.

They scanned my head last year, with the gradient coils around my head like some horror mask: noisy and boring.

John

A few years ago they scanned my sinuses.

I must admit a claustrophobic feeling also :-(

...Jim Thompson

That's probably because you guys don't have a house with a narrow crawl space. At least you can be sure that there won't be critters such as rattle snakes waiting inside that MRI tube.

No crawl space, but I can stand up straight in my attic... now partially floored for storage.

Mostly scorpions around here ;-)

...Jim Thompson

Noisy & boring is right. I fell asleep briefly and was mildly scolded for it - they could see my eyeballs rolling around.

-- Joe

me

I had a rattle snake in my garage a couple of weeks ago.

Any obvious neural effects from the scanning fields?

Is that because they check them every morning?

Thanks, nothing serious except a bad pain in my neck C5/C6 disk problems. It was a bit disheartening to hear the technician say "that looks real bad, you should get that fixed" Then I remembered she said same thing two years ago. The Dr reports it is same as before, only now it hurts worse. I guess I gotta do something :(

Are they inside the machine or are they in the frame clamped around my head and neck?

I told the tech to give me a time check every so often so I wouldn't lose my mind, then I worked out a design problem in my head for 30 minutes as a distraction. I can put up with a lot of stuff but being inside or under that thing creeps me out. I keep having visions of oxygen cylinders getting sucked through the drywall and crushing me or the magnet quenching and getting burned in a puff of steam.

They should never say that. It's almost like a surgeon saying "Oh s..t! That wasn't good."

Must be painful. My sore ones are L4/L5/L6. The docs never figured out that I might have a magnesium deficiency. A CPA (!) gave me that hint. Taking them big Costco pills since two years. Knock on wood, in those two years it hasn't floored me once and that's a record.

They're moving? Wires loose? It certainly is noisy. I went into the tube last year. I'm pretty claustrophobic, but handled it OK. Not a chance of sleeping though. I certainly was ready to come out after a half-hour.

Find anything? ;-)

...and found nothing? 8-) SCNR. I'm surpirsed no one else took the shot.

Well, bits of him twitching abnormally might be a sign. Google TMS

What an absurd fear. It quenches, a lot of cold helium blows out, the O2 in the room is displaced, and you die painlessly of asphixiation.

John