fMRI: a New Service Provided by Ghaem Hospital

In order to provide new services to patients, functional MRI (fMRI) was scientifically and practically implemented by Departments of Medical Physics and Radiology at Mashhad University of Medical Sciences co-venturing with Educational Therapeutic Research Center at Ghaem Hospital, WEBDA reported.

Saying that the service has been recently activated in Radiology Department at Ghaem Hospital, Faculty Member at Mashhad University of Medical Sciences, Sirous Nekooei, PhD, added that functional MRI identifies function of each part of brain.

“Receiving this type of information, the technology can prevent possible damage to various parts of brain in surgery operations.”

“In normal MRI, an image of brain’s structures is produced and then, diverse diseases are identified based on it; however, adopting functional MRI, functions of brain’s various parts are depicted.”

The Radiology specialist held, “This process identifies functions of each part of brain. For example, in case of a brain tumor in a patient going to undergo a surgery, it will be possible to identify how far the tumor is from brain’s speech center and to prevent possible damage to it.”

Referring to other functions of fMRI, he said, “The technology has, also, research applications that help us with identifying functions of different parts of brain in memory, certain diseases, and so forth.”

“This technology, moreover, might be used to early diagnose many diseases such as autism.”

“Functional MRI was initially performed at Tehran University and Educational Therapeutic Research Center supported by Mashhad University of Medical Sciences is known as the second center active in this area.”

“If the foreign manufacturing company were to install the system, it would be costly; however, taking an approach based on resistance economy and collaborating with Medical Physics Department at the university, we managed to economically install it.”

“Here, we used special software and hardware designed and produced in Iran.”

“Aided by officials at Ghaem Hospital and Mashhad University of Medical Sciences, we hope that in the future, we can add certain other hardware to the system so that we might gain more accomplishments.”

“If successful, we will be able to help some patients in a week instead of just a single one.”

He said that cost of applying fMRI to each patient is ranged from 215 to 307 dollars, adding, “This process will prevent possible damage to patient’s brain in brain surgery, and thereby, it will prevent high treatment cost for removing probable side effects.”