MRI machine that allows people to move around inside being used at VGH
Posted July 2, 2014 6:08 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VANCOUVER – Researchers in Vancouver are using an MRI machine that allows people to move around in the machines, so their joints can be seen in action to possibly prevent hip osteoarthritis decades later.
Biomedical engineer and orthopedics professor David Wilson says there are about a dozen such Italian-made machines in the world but the one at Vancouver General Hospital is solely being used for research purposes.
He says the others, in the United Kingdom, Italy and mostly in the US, are for patients who are too heavy or so claustrophobic that they can’t lie still as required in the confines of traditional MRI machines.
Wilson, who is also a researcher at the Centre for Hip Health and Mobility, says people who have some hip pain because of possible bone deformities and are between their 20s and 50s are part of the study.
About 140 patients will be followed for eight years as researchers monitor their pain and what activities they should or should not be doing to prevent hip problems.
They are also part of a larger study of 1,100 Caucasians, Chinese and First Nations people whose hip pain may be caused by the deformities that researchers believe could lead to osteoarthritis.
