MRI Noise

April 30, 2008

University of Florida engineering students have come up with a way that could make MRI exams less stressful and less noisy.

This headset can reduce the loud and repetitive noises magnetic resonance imaging machines make. The sounds created by powerful magnets range from whirring to grinding noises as loud as a jet engine. Patients already stressed out from the experience often wiggle around because of the noise. Engineer Stephen Forguson says that causes a problem.

Forguson: “Any motion inside while they’re taking those pictures can cause image distortion and they’ll have to restart, so just for the patient’s side, having a quieter environment is more beneficial.”

Fewer repeat exams can also free up the machine for other patients. The MRI presented special challenges in designing the headset, since any metal in the chamber can distort the images.

Forguson: “All these were hard technical difficulties to overcome, but mostly it’s that we couldn’t put any electronics in there. And we had to come up with a new way to cancel noise that really had never been done as far as we could tell.”

The system pipes in sounds on top of the repetitive noises the MRI makes. So far engineers have reduced noise similar to an MRI by fifteen decibels.

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