BSRG Senior Research Fellow Dr Paige Little said the original impetus for the scientific study was to find cheap and easily sourced skin surface marker alternatives to the currently available commercial markers that are generally used during MRI scans. QUT media released a story last week to announce the publication of this world first work in the highly ranked open access version of the British Medical Journal. You can view the QUT Media Release here.
For children fearful of undergoing MRI scans, an inexpensive everyday item used as a marker, such as a jelly baby lolly or a plastic, fish-shaped soy sauce container, might make the process a little less intimidating. And thanks to a study by the Biomechanics and Spine Research Group, these and other common items have been shown to be visible, effective MRI markers, when placed on a patient’s skin, to pinpoint specific anatomical areas or pathologies being scanned.
Senior Research Fellow Dr Paige Little, from the QUT Biomechanics and Spine Research Group, said MRI uses strong magnetic fields to generate images of organs, bone and tissue inside the body and the loud noises made by the equipment adds to the challenges radiographers face to perform MRI scans successfully on children.
She said the BSRG’s collaborative sleep postures research project with Sealy of Australia was the inspiration for this work. “Single-use commercial markers cost between $6 and $10 each, and for our sleep posture study we had 50 participants, and we needed 50 markers for each participant, which made the cost prohibitive,” Dr Little said. While the study didn’t test at what point a vitamin capsule or sauce container might rupture and spill its contents, the research group has since used vitamin D capsules routinely in spinal studies, and in its Sealy of Australia-supported ‘Science of Sleep’ postures project, requiring multiple markers under body weight throughout extended MRI scanning sessions, and none had ruptured or degraded.
Co-authors with Dr Little of the BMJ Open study are Mrs Maree Izatt, Dr Caroline Grant, and Dr Deborah Lees from the QUT Biomechanics and Spine Research Group, and Ms Susan Mills from Mater Medical Imaging. The full study can be accessed at BMJ Online here.
