I just got back from a brain MRI. Apparently I still have one.
I thought I had done one of these before, but I guess not. At least, I don't remember it. Basically, they lock your head down in a little cage and then shove you into a tube only a couple of inches bigger than your head. I've always wondered why people complain about MRIs being claustrophobic, and now I know. I don't happen to be especially claustrophobic myself, but even so it was fairly uncomfortable. I can certainly see how it would seriously spook someone who was claustrophobic.
Anyway, it's easier if you close your eyes. That's my pro tip for the day.
I'm not clausterphobic, but I found it very hard to get through. The thwup thwup got faster and faster such that it felt like my heart rate was going up and up. I had them put on The Beatles, but "related" songs came on, and one was about death. Ugh. Will take something next time.
Glad you have a brain, Kevin!
I wasn't feeling well when they put me in but I found the sounds interesting enough to keep me distracted through it. After they pulled me out I said to the tech "You kids and your EDM" and got a laugh. At least with the machine I was in it would've made a good sample beat to build on.
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My wife really IS claustrophobic. And, she had a brain tumor. Miraculously, she has responded really, really well to treatment and surgery. And so she is still with us 8 years later, with no sign of recurrence.
But that means she's had a great many MRI's done of her head. And she's had sedatives for every one because of the claustrophobia.
There are "open style" machines, but maybe they're not much better. Expected to have an mri at one point due to injury, but decided against it. Although claustrophobia wasn't a factor when I was younger, it certainly would be now.
You should get them to give you an image of your brain and then use it on official portraits and stationery.
Hang it over the fireplace.
Have it made out of that doggie chew-toy material and sell it in pet shops.
Your brain could be huge, Kevin! No one's ever monetized their actual brain before.
I have a CD of brain images from my MRI several years ago. The weird ones are the slices that go through your eyeballs and optic nerves.
And that's where you got your avatar?
But that would make an awesome t-shirt. You could send them to all your friends without telling them what it is and let them find out, just incidentally, several years later after they tell you they wore it out.
I wasn't claustrophobic, or at least I never thought I was, before I opened my eyes in that MRI machine and saw the ceiling was 2 inches above me!
I had one a few weeks ago. Closed my eyes before they slid me into the tube, and didn’t open them again until I was out. Not my first rodeo.
Yea, the trick is to shut your eyes *before* they slide you into the machine, and don't open them no matter what until you're out.
Just spend the entire time imagining how roomy it must be above your face, while focusing on how weird it feels to have a massive magnet pulling the iron in your blood all over the place, or wondering if all of the insane noises this thing makes was an engineer's practical joke.
Dang! I was going to say I can’t ever have an MRI of the brain. Till I read the comment about sedation- that’s the way it will have to be if ever…
I had a brain MRI last year. I was scared because I'm claustrophobic, but it turned out to be easy. The 'wide-open bore' type is much larger (large enough pictures show three people in one) and open on both ends. I don't want anyone not to get a necessary scan because of fear. I also loved getting a look at my beautiful brain, even if it was a little worn around the edges! (An open or pancake MRI is also possible, but reputed not to be quite as good.)
Hate MRIs with the heat of a thousand suns. God willing I will never have to do one again. I am claustrophobic and I felt bad for the technician.
er, what happened to the technician?
I AM claustrophobic. The first time I went for one, they shoved me into the tube and I freaked. They couldn't sedate me cause I drove. Went back with a driver; they shot me up with valium (twice) and I still barely got through it.
I felt really stupid when the tech told me he occasionally put himself in the tube to nap.
I love the Steven Wright line about getting an MRI to find out if he had claustrophobia.
Had an MRI before back surgery.
Noisy fucker!!!
I looked at the image with the surgeon and wondered how the hell anyone could interpret it.
They put a washcloth over my eyes. I never saw a thing. Just heard the incredibly loud banging during the MRI.
I had assumed that we commenters WERE your brain, Mr D!
And why did you need an MRI? Is this for something new? Is all well?
Misophonia is surely a greater concern than claustrophobia.
I empathize with you. My little hospital had a small diameter MRI and larger folks had to be sent out. My nose just barely cleared the top. Claustrophobia for certain. The hospital has gone big and now there is actually room to exchange air.
Hang in there Kevin! We all know that you do have a brain. There was never any doubt.
It’s like 95-110 decibels. For 30-45 minutes. Ear plugs and headphones.
I had to get a shoulder MRI a few years ago. I'm a fairly big guy, but not NFL linebacker big. Nevertheless, I had to really scrunch myself to fit.
Congrats!
...But are you bigly enough to repeat, "Person, Man, Woman, Camera, TV"?
When are you going to write up about Katherine Wu's latest article and the Crits-Christoph (Worobey) paper?
You can't avoid it for forever, amirite? You chose to take this path.
What article? I already wrote about it, didn't I?
(If you mean the controversy over proper use of GISAID data, I don't really care about that.)
So, it's no big deal that the underlying Crit-Christoph paper was made public for everyone to review? The extent of the conversation you're interested in was what Wu left readers with, last week?
C'mon KD, you know everyone's wanting to chime in on how this is more proof that the lab leak theory is a conspiracy.
Also, I have three more things to add, after reading the Crits-Christoph paper.
But also, you really should be concerned that Chinese CDC would remove data and GISAID cut off researchers. Openness is critical, isn't it?
The iron on your hemoglobin is not affected by the magnetic field, but the electric field is flipping every hydrogen atom in your body up and down millions of times a second.
Hah, I've had two in the last month. The machine I went into had a little larger tube than the older ones so it wasn't that bad. First one was on my shoulder, I got a call the next day a scheduled replacement surgery for next month. The second was on my lower back, follow up appointment is in a week.
Then there was the attorney in Brazil who accompanied his mother when she had an MRI. He neglected to inform the staff he was carrying a gun. The magnetic field ripped the gun out his waistband and caused it to go off, killing him. So much for carrying a gun to insure your personal safety.
Why are these machines so freaking loud? Just ask Dr. Science (not affiliated with Duck's Breath Mystery Theater).
Magnetic resonance imaging is based on nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy. NMR uses powerful superconducting magnets to align atomic nuclei. Nuclei contain protons and protons have a quantum property called spin (but you can't think of it as rotation). They are also charged. And spin + electric charge = tiny bar magnets. They rotate to align with the external field. Then you tickle them with radio waves which causes them to emit radiation that depends on the composition of the sample -- different atomic nuclei are tiny magnets with different strengths. Varying the radio frequency picks out different nuclei. We won't get into magic angles or why the sample spins.
An MRI looks specifically for the protons in the hydrogen atoms in water molecules, fat, and other tissues. The magnetic field of an MRI varies spatially in three dimensions whereas an NMR field is uniform and unvarying. When you are stuck in an MRI machine, you are in a powerful magnetic field that is aligned with the long axis of the machine. The majority of the proton magnets align with the field so your entire body becomes a bar magnet. However, not all of them.
Then you are blasted with a powerful radio pulse in the 10 to 100 megahertz range and a power of 10 to 30 kilowatts (thousand watts). That flips some of the protons from their low energy state (aligned with the field) to their high energy state (opposed to the field). They eventually flip back to the low energy state and reemit the radiation.
It is NEVER a good idea to put yourself that close to that powerful a radio transmitter. To prevent problems, the radio is pulsed rather than continuous which decreases exposure risk.
What the MRI machine adds to an NMR machine is a second set of electromagnets (the gradient coils) that cause the uniform field of an MRI machine to distort in a way that can be tuned electrically to make it stronger in some parts of the body than others. That allows the machine to pinpoint the source of the radio waves emitted from your body by varying the gradient coils to scan the field across a particular region and thereby, over time, generate a 3d map of the hydrogen atoms in your body.
The gradient coils need to be pulsed very rapidly in order to scan across a specific part of the body. So we have gradient magnets inside a big field magnet, and as the gradient magnets are pulsed and their magnetic strength varies, they experience a variable force that causes them to move a distance that varies as the gradient coils vary (Lorentz force for physics junkies). That is the source of the noise. The vibration of the gradient magnets causes the air around them to vibrate and there is your sound wave. Since the pulsing is generally in the kilohertz range, that is well within most people's ability to hear, and the pulsing is powerful enough to make the amplitude of that wave pretty large -- around 110 decibels (for comparison, standing on the tarmac around a jet that is about to take off is about 120 decibels, which is why all the ground crew wears headphones -- continuous exposure to 120 decibels is a good way to go deaf very fast).
A friend of mine worked for Paul Lauterbur as a postdoc. Lauterbur won the Nobel Prize in Medicine for inventing the MRI. My friend went on to work on advanced MRI technology at the National Institutes of Health, where all his experimental machines had to be sealed in a soundproof room before use. There was someone else in the lab who gave tours and she always wore a long necklace made of a paramagnetic material. Gradually, as she did her spiel, it would swing closer and closer to the big magnet.
And I thought they made noise just because they were cheap.
Thanks! This illuminates a lot.
I had my head [MRI-] examined last year. 13 types of scans in a full-sized MRI. But, being a fan of some of the more exotic forms of electronic music I found the sounds fascinating, and actually enjoyed the experience✱. Got a CDROM of the images afterwards, viewable via the freely available app Miele. More fun!
✱ You now might no longer wonder where my 'nym comes from.
I've always thought the noise of the MRI is the technological or mechanical equivalent of a mockingbird. Many different songs, but tend to repeat themselves. That cage on the head induced a bit of claustrophobia with brain MRI's. The worst part to me is having to hold still for maybe 30 minutes while your old body aches all over.
Everybody but me has had their head examined. What is wrong with me!?
First time in an MRI tube I had a mini panic attack, until I looked above my head and realized that I was put into the machine feet first (lower back imaging). To have my head examined, I would need an open MRI or have them really juice me up. Helps if the tech has decent music to play in your headphones.