Assessing a stroke demands a rapid, life-or-death assessment: Is the culprit a clot, which requires a blood thinner, or bleeding in the brain, which requires surgery? Now, a portable MRI device can help make that assessment right at a patient’s bedside — and in much less time than required by a trip to a standard machine.
The Swoop MRI — which was created with input from Yale Medicine in New Haven, Connecticut — received Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval in August 2020 and is already at work in several U.S. hospitals.
The new portable machine offers many advantages over its massive cousin, says Yale neurologist Kevin Sheth, MD.
“The very strong magnets in regular MRIs bring a lot of challenges,” he explains. “You need intensive power and cooling, precautions like a shielded room, and a lot of training. If you use a weaker magnet, all those problems go away.”
The weaker magnet is effective, according to an August 2021 study, which asked clinicians to identify various cerebral pathologies using Swoop images. “The goal is not to be as good as a high-magnet MRI, but to be good enough for clinical decisions,” says Sheth, who co-authored the study but has no financial interest in Hyperfine, the Connecticut-based company that produces the machine.
Swoop’s size — it’s smaller than some refrigerators — eliminates the need to move frail patients down hospital hallways. What’s more, its cost — around $100,000 compared to $1 million for the bigger machine — puts it within reach of hospitals and regions with fewer resources. “This could essentially democratize brain imaging,” argues Sheth.
Source: https://www.aamc.org/news-insights/8-medical-advances-you-may-have-missed-during-covid-19
