| Whole Body Screening MRI | $2,950 |
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Whole body screening MRI examination does not replace a dedicated scan of a specific area that your physician has a concern with. If you have a known medical condition that requires specific imaging, you should arrange for dedicated imaging of that area. Whole body screening is a useful exam to give an overview of your general imaging health.
A whole body screening MRI exam will include the following areas for assessment:
Head - A full routine head scan is performed, consisting of at least 5 different types of images to assess for overall brain health, ischemia, MS, tumors, stroke, traumatic brain injury, and many other conditions.
Spine - Imaging of the entire length of the spine is performed. This includes dedicated imaging of the Cervical, Thoracic and Lumbar sections, allowing for assessment of disc, bone and spinal cord health.
Carotids - An Magnetic Resonance Angiogram without the need for an injection of contrast dye is included. This allows for assessment of blockages, aneurysms, stenosis or malformations of the blood vessels that travel from the heart to the brain (Carotid, Vertebral and Basilar arteries).
Heart - A series of images of the heart are aquired, allowing the motion of the heart beating to be assessed. Our cardiac MRI radiologist will measure your cardiac function and include this in the detailed report your physician will receive. This includes an assessment of wall motion, ejection fractions and overall health of the myocardium.
Chest - Several types of images are acquired of the chest. While MRI is not the preferred modality for imaging the lungs, it does provide a good overview of the overall health of chest and will allow for some types of lesions to be visualized. Both specialized Diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) and Short Tau Inversion Recovery (STIR) sequences are routinely included in addition to our standard imaging.
Abdomen - All the organs of the abdomen are included in the whole body screening exam. While not a dedicated exam for any one organ, whole body screening gives a good overview of all the organs. We include both specialized DWI and STIR imaging in addition to our routine sequences.
Pelvis - Both soft tissue organs and bony anatomy are visulaized in the pelvic section of the whole body screening exam. As with the chest and abdomen, we include the specialized DWI and STIR imaging to aid in the detection and identification of several types of pathology. If specific concerns regarding symptoms attributable to individual organs are indicated, we recommend your doctor requests a dedicated MRI exam for those indications.
Whole body screening MRI is our most lengthy exam. In order to fully image all the areas as described above the appointment will take a full 3 hours. For those who would have difficulty remaining in the scanner for this entire duration, we recommend that the exam be split into two 1.5 hour sessions. These can be done on the same day with a short break in between (perhaps for lunch or shopping?) or on two separate days. Please let us know what your preference is at the time of booking your exam. We would be pleased to accommodate your needs.