As my scanner is down at the moment, with service engineers tearing things apart to identify some sources of spikes, there’s a bit of a delay in getting the resting state data I promised a couple of weeks ago. Please standby, normal service will be resumed shortly. For the time being I thought I’d continue the topic of ‘foreign objects and debris.’ Changing tacks a little bit, away from the insidious, small stuff, I thought it might be edifying to take a look at the big stuff – the stuff with major safety implications.
If you’re a regular fMRIer then you will already have been treated to safety videos demonstrating the sorts of bad things that can happen to a watermelon or a brick wall when magnetic objects are allowed to impact an MRI magnet. If you’re an fMRI newbie, welcome. May I suggest you spend a few minutes checking out YouTube videos for your enlightenment? Here are links to some goodies:
Oxygen cylinder 1 – 0 Watermelon
The rear wall of an MRI suite gets a good bashing from an oxygen cylinder
One wonders whether someone had been sitting on this chair when it started to move…
More watermelon abuse
And here is a video of some tests we did with an old 4 T magnet that was about to be decommissioned. We did a chair, too, but ours was deliberate:
Fun, eh? Sure, this stuff is exhilarating when it’s intentional and controlled. But I bet you don’t fancy being the person responsible for stabbing your subject repeatedly with the pair of scissors that you accidentally carried into the magnet room.
