At Emory university I got to see a cool idea to help kids get comfortable with MRI machines. Some Georgia Tech students built a fake MRI machine (a realistic mechanical structure with a sliding bed) that kids could still get into. The cool thing was that it had Bose speakers built into the fake machine so that they could play the sounds of a real MRI machine makes as that is a big aspect that makes kids get anxiety and fear of the machine.
It was all in a separate room right by the waiting room and the room with the real MRI. It was so cool to see such a practical solution to patient care especially for kids.
Having worked in the GT/GSU center, it's worth noting that that mock scanner (and indeed the MRI itself) are research-only, but yes the attention my forebears put into the experience particularly for children. Back then there were just a handful of us supporting labs from all 3 schools!
I had an MRI recently and I knew what to expect in terms of the enclosed space, however, all the various sounds the machine makes is a bit alarming. They are quite loud and vary quite a bit in terms of tone and type.
I got into an MRI once, a while ago. Iirc the most alarming aspect of the sounds was that they gave the impression of massive objects spinning, whirring, and moving rather fast around you.
Modern CT scanners, at high rate acquisition modes (like ECG-gated cardiac imaging), spin ridiculously large masses (tube one side + detector on the other) at ridiculously large speeds without killing anyone.
In contrast, MRIs are like the ultimate trance build-up.
The bore of a 3T scanner makes a 1.5T machine seem like it’s the Metropolitan Opera House. The bore is the size of your head with just enough room to not drag your nose on the top.
There's a pretty inspirational Ted Talk about the founder of IDEO, a design firm that created the first Apple mouse, where an MRI machine engineer went through their design process and created a fun experience for kids who were scared of the machines. It's here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16p9YRF0l-g and starts at about 6:00 and lasts for a bit over 2 minutes. The whole video is worth it though imo
Errr, no? First of all, the kid might freak out from the AI glasses itself, if it could even wear it considering size, weight and other possible health limitations the child might have. They might not ever seen an AI set, they're jittery as it is, and you're introducing another set of variables and strange things they have to figure out.
Also, will they be able to comprehend that the things they are seeing in the AI image is an analogue of what will happen soon? It won't replace the "tactileness" of the machine and process, adults or companions can't guide them through a hologram in any immediate way.
To add to this this, many of the aspects that make MRI's uncomfortable for kids and even adults is all the physical sensations. Even the claustrophobia can get to many adults if they have never been in one of these machines. Also aspects such as the having the transmit/recoveree coil harness on the patient are physicals sensations you have to experience (for example sensing coils for the head) and really cant be emulated. The sound itself is also very physical as it is somthing not just heard but also felt by the patients. The sound is caused by electromechanical (fast high current switching of the electromagnet coils of the gradient coils) interactions in the operation of the machine itself so you might also feel the sound via the machine or coming from many directions in the bore.
I remembers from my class that there are some published works that design MRI sequences ("pattern" in which you operate the MRI machine to switch/modulate the electromagnets of the gradient coils, send RF pulses, and record the received RF pulses) in such a way that they reduce or don't cause the majority of the noise from the switching of the gradient coil in a typical MRI sequence.
> there are some published works that design MRI sequences ("pattern" in which you operate the MRI machine to switch/modulate the electromagnets of the gradient coils, send RF pulses, and record the received RF pulses) in such a way that they reduce or don't cause the majority of the noise from the switching of the gradient coil in a typical MRI sequence.
There are and they have various names from vendors (whisper mode, quiet suite etc). Unfortunately these modes of operation are usually a bit limiting in terms of resolution and make sequences longer. They do reduce the noise.
By and large, if you give kids a movie to watch you’ll get 30 minutes of them remaining still.
Clinically, the application for noise reduction is often for patients whose hearing is at risk and can’t be protected effectively. Animals and patients with pathology which prevents earplug or headphone use etc.
Reading this makes me glad that you can't feel what the intense magnetic field does to the hydrogen atoms in you. (I don't know, I've never been in one)
No but what _might_ work is a VR headset and headphones so that when they do go into the real MRI they can experience some kind of fun analogue, like they are lying in a colourful forest being rolled into a carved out wooden log, watching birds fly over and so on. Something like this: https://youtu.be/VgCPMkNlkSI?feature=shared&t=48
Everything used close to or within a scanner seems to be steampunk version of the electronic equivalent: the call bell is pneumatic, headphones are 1970s airplane style airphones, and video displays to use for image recognition/memory recall research are some periscope contraptions.
I think a refracted VR display made of ulexite-like glasses might have a place.
That'd be difficult given how an MRI works. Plus, VR wouldn't really be necessary given that the patient typically can't move their head. There do exist non-metallic goggles and headphones that pipe in the stuff from external electrical sources in a non-electrical way to the patient, as you can see in the video below. I'm not sure how ubiquitous those are, though.
> The LEGO Foundation has announced it will donate 600 LEGO® MRI Scanners to hospitals worldwide
Seriously LEGO, 600 for a worldwide campaign, your marketing campaign didn't have more budget than this? This would barely be enough to make a meaningful difference for Copenhagen alone!
Using sick children to do brand marketing is always walking on a tight rope, but if you're actually helping them why not. But by giving only 600 LEGO sets, it's even below the smallest Rotary fundraiser you can find in rural places, this is beyond ridiculous.
I get it. This is a smaller set, around 500 pieces, so a retail value of about $50 US.
So you're looking at an outlay of about $30,000. Which isn't a lot for the most popular toy brand on the face of the Earth. Lego could probably afford to provide a Lego MRI for every MRI machine on the face of the Earth and not break the bank.
HOWEVER. This does look to be an employee-driven initiative. And I don't mean it's something chaired by an employee, I mean a dude in Billund just did this. Then brought it to management for expansion. And it's only a single part of Lego's Learning Through Play - (https://learningthroughplay.com/) program, so it's possible this is like the extent of this project's budget.
It's employee driven in collaboration with Odense University Hospital. It's part of a study, so handing out lego sets to every hospital on the planet with an MRI machine just doesn't make sense.
The sets are assembled by volunteer Lego employees with bricks provided by Lego.
Yes, I was pointing out that the second layer is kind of close to the surface as well.
The surface layer is that Lego is providing sets to hospitals. Which is nice.
The second layer is that they're just giving them out to 300 hospitals. Which seems stingy considering Lego's revenue.
The next layer is that it is an employee driven collaboration with other entities to conduct a study to see how to best construct and use these sets to put kids at ease. Which is more complex.
The problem doesn't come from the fact that they're making a study or that it is employee-driven. It's that it's being co-opted as a marketing campaign with this publication. Nobody forced them to write such a PR piece, nor to write it in this way making grandiose claims about being a game-changer and being distributed worldwide.
When you use such a title
“The LEGO Foundation to donate LEGO® MRI Scanners to hospitals globally” for an employee-driven initiative that merely involves 600 LEGO sets, your marketing is a shame.
I was also surprised by this low number. Even if we go low and assume only a 10% profit margin on LEGO sets and assume the average LEGO set costs $46.31 (https://brickset.com/article/31370/a-decade-of-lego-in-graph...). And assume this set costs $1,000 for LEGO to produce (low economics of scale).
That means donating 600 sets will cost them the profit of selling:
(600 sets * $1,000) / (10% profit * $46.31 per normal LEGO set sold) = 129,562 LEGO sets.
(129,562 / 220,000,000) * 1 year = 0.0006 years ≈ 5 hours and 20 minutes of profits.
If I calculate my income over a 5 hours and 20 minutes period (based on dividing my monthly salary by working 36 hours per week), it would be equivalent to me donating €160 to a good cause. Not something I'd publish a proud blog post about.
> And assume this set costs $1,000 for LEGO to produce (low economics of scale)
This makes no sense unless you think they are making pieces that are only for this set which is almost certainly not the case considering others have posted rebrickable links for essentially the exact set[1]
I was assuming here that they need to create a build instruction, box etc. and ship all these out for only 600 sets instead of millions like normal sets.
Of course I have zero insight into LEGO's operational processes and logistics. Which is why I took numbers that would make LEGO look more generous than they probably are: low profit margin, high cost per MRI set.
I was also intrigued to see a real MRI scanner built with Legos. Also disappointed to see they only give away 600 of these. What's the total cost of this marketing campaign for Lego? $20k?
What hospitals need are more DVD/video players in the MRI room... that helped my daughter the most when she gets MRIs every three months. Kids can go through a lot with a little bit of distraction.
I’m glad that it’s helpful as someone who works on making the fMRI and media displays on MRI machines work. I’m glad that my software work has made that a bearable process for your daughter and other kids.
I can say that these machines get so much use in pediatric oncology wards (personal experience). It's an excellent way to let the kids get their minds off the chemo.
A friend's child was given one of these, and I'm envious. Not only is it a cool model but I also have to get regular MRI - I've got another one today in fact.
Having the model has really helped with their anxiety and means we've been able to play with it together and talk about the process and noises, and make it a bit more normal.
My 21y old daughter needed to get a CT scan after an unexpected seizure - she asked me to go in with her and hold her hand if it was possible.
So they gave me a vest to wear like a baseball umpire and the scanner looked like a StarGate - they got out of the room then the machine spun up - part of the bed was then pulled in and it was all over in 30 seconds.
I feel like "coping concepts" like this are why todays kids have more increased anxiety...It's medical imagery for heavens sake. There are some normal anxieties they just need to learn to face.
Coping strategies are, by and large, how people learn to face sources of anxiety. Exposure does not reduce anxiety per se; if steps aren't taken to control or mitigate the anxiety response, it can be reinforced instead of diminished.
I would typically tend to disagree with you, but some thoughts.
MRIs are fairly daunting machines. Even working in healthcare and as a firefighter, and having received multiple CT scans, my first MRI was a little intense. Mostly you're not necessarily in the best mindset to begin with...
... however, I do somewhat agree with you.
Looking around Discord last week, I saw a bunch of servers with earnest "warnings" to people about the national alert test.
"This is going to make a loud noise, and that may be frightening or scary to you, so we'd advise everyone to turn their phones and TVs off for the duration of the test to protect yourselves."
and verbiage to that effect (suffice to say that wasn't an exaggeration). Things like that are teaching people to jump at shadows, and more concerningly, there is a steadily growing subset of people who revel, indeed sometimes take pride in this at self-identifying like this, lumping it under a vastly wider umbrella definition of 'neurodivergent' than was ever intended by that moniker.
No, they don’t make mock MRI scanners at any significant volume, and an MRI scanner at a hospital is like an aircraft on the tarmac for an airline - every minute it’s not in use is a minute that the owner is losing money.
These things aren't that expensive: about $1m - $3m for a top of the line one, and cost about $20k/month to operate on top of that. Depending on what kind of MRI you want, you can pay less than $200k. You can find used/refurbished GE Signa LX 1.5T's for ~$100k for instance.
But let's assume you've got a million dollar top of the line model, the expected lifespan is 10 years, and you're using it 20 hours / day, then you need to account ~$100 per hour of usage. That's not a crazy amount in the medical world. Personnel costs of those operating / using it are going to outweigh the cost of the machine itself.
Costs vary hugely depending on machine spec and how it’s run. A gold plated set of contracts with specified uptime is not cheap, but it is easily a saving when you can’t bill thousands an hour due to an outage.
Spreading the cost over 10 years is a little misleading. Scanners can last 15 years without too much drama, but upgrades every 5 or so years which cost hundreds of thousands can be expected.
An outpatient scanner will not get 20 hours usage per day where I live, but a hospital one could.
Staff costs, as you note, are huge and dwarf the scanner costs over its lifetime. I wouldn’t be surprised if staffing was a 10x multiplier on scanner costs.
Part of me agrees with you, but then you meet a kid who has some terrible illness and is afraid of X and needs it.
It turns out that ‘just deal with it’ is a pretty cruel attitude when a child needs help.
I’m not convinced that a Lego set will help get an MR done, but if these sets do help a few kids, that’s a pretty good thing. You never know what’ll help.
Drugs. Give the patient some drugs to keep them calm. Having escorted a few family members to MRI appointments, I detect that the only reason not to drug patients is that the MRI staff lack the medical expertise to supervise drugged people. They are generally technicians rather than doctors/nurses.
The situation is like dentistry imho. Most people are fine having with local antithetic, but there are dentists that specialize in anxious people who need actual sedation. So have the one MRI center with a doc to knock you out long enough for the machine to do its thing.
The procedure for getting a patient in and out of the machine always seems to take much longer than the actual scan. It might seem a bit dystopian, but a line of unconscious patients already secured on gurneys could probably be moved much more quickly than people climbing in and out, minimizing the downtime between patients.
Monitoring a patient when you are next to them is one thing, but it’s quite another to monitor a patient in another room with equipment that can’t contain wires and is running cables at 10ish metres long.
Sedation adds about 50% more time to a scan and anaesthetics doubles or quadruples scanner time while also adding the cost of anaesthetics, prep and recovery, which is huge.
Doing scans without sedation is preferable.
On a well run MR, patient change over is 1-2 minutes. Coil setup takes longer and varies between scans but for 20 minutes of imaging I’d expect bookings to be 30 minutes. The 20 minutes doesn’t include pauses between scans, SAR cool down and sequence prep time (which are all hard limits and staff can’t really improve them).
>> often trained to administer drugs and other things
Not in the clinics I've seen. Maybe in full hospitals, but in my area the majority of MRIs are at small clinics where the staff are adamant that they cannot handle any drugs beyond contrast agents.
Edit: found some pictures online https://www.cores.emory.edu/csic/resources/imaging/mri_for_h...