David R. Pickens PhD, Presenter: Stockholder, Johnson & Johnson

1) Indentify requirements for improving quality assurance and compliance tools for advanced and hybrid MRI systems. 2) Indentify the need for new quality assurance metrics and testing procedures for advanced systems.  3) Identify new hardware systems and new procedures needed to evaluate these systems. 4) Understand the role of the medical physicist in the clinical testing and use of these systems.  

This talk will look into the future of clinical MR imaging and what the clinical medical physicist will need to be doing as the technology of MR imaging evolves.  Many of the measurement techniques used today will need to be expanded to address the advent of higher field imaging systems and dedicated imagers for specialty applications.  Included will be the need to address quality assurance and testing metrics for multi-channel MR imagers and hybrid devices such as MR/PET systems.  New pulse sequences and acquisition methods, increasing use of MR spectroscopy, and real-time guidance procedures will place the burden on the medical physicist to define and use new tools to properly evaluate these systems, but the clinical applications must be understood so that these tools are use correctly.  Finally, new rules, clinical requirements, and regulations will mean that the medical physicist must actively work to keep her/his sites compliant and must work closely with physicians to ensure best performance of these systems.    

http://media.rsna.org/media/abstract/2014/13010890/RC121C sec.pdf

Pickens, D, Magnetic Resonance Imaging 2.0 .  Radiological Society of North America 2014 Scientific Assembly and Annual Meeting, - ,Chicago IL. http://archive.rsna.org/2014/13010890.html