4 ms·
MRIs use helium, which ain't cheap, although truthfully I don't know if the helium runs dry fast or if you can use the same helium supply indefinitely.
by spondylosaurus 3y ago
MRIs use helium, which ain't cheap, although truthfully I don't know if the helium runs dry fast or if you can use the same helium supply indefinitely.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- iancmceachern 3y agoThe helium is one of the lowest cost parts of an MRI machine. There is a big heavy spinning magnet that spins around your whole body at like 50 rpm. It's not an easy thing to make.
- modeless 3y agoMRI machines don't spin. You are thinking of CT scanners.
- ta988 3y agoYou are not talking about an MRI, nor a CT. Magnet is fixed in an MRI and you just pulse fields in the XYZ directions to create gradients of magnetic field. The pulse emission and receiving antennas are fixed too. In a CT scan, what is rotating is one or many xray sources and one or many detectors plus some electronics and cooling systems if needed. PET scans have fixed rings of pairs of detectors. But they can also be combined with a CT in the same instrument.
- iancmceachern 3y agoThanks, my bad. Revising my point to be that phasing those fields and controlling the power, is expensive and complicated
- ta988 3y agoAll of that is included in the initial price of the machine. There is no real cost associated when running the machine itself (outside of when a preamp or pulse generator burns but that's rare).
- ta988 3y agoThe helium is used whether you use the machine or not, it is just keeping the superconducting magnet cool (and you can't really put it out of field without an incredible cost and risk of never being able to put it in field again). Plus most recent machines have decent recycling systems (that do not reduce to 0 but over 90% reduction in many cases)