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

They're in the horror mask around your head. For body stuff, there's an equivalent rig.

John