Pediatric Imaging - Children's Mercy Hospitals and Clinics

ADVaNCING THEDIaGNOSTICPOWERS OF MRIWith a 3 Tesla MRI unit, plus two 1.5 Tesla units, Children’sMercy is the only pediatric provider in the region capableof providing advanced pediatric neurological, orthopaedic,and cardiac imaging procedures.Beyond the powerful MRI unitsthemselves, Children’s Mercy isleading the way into advancedimaging using the current technologyin new ways to provide more detailedinformation to help physicians, surgeonsand parents make more informeddecisions.Functional ImagingFunctional imaging looks at functionsof different parts of the brain and usesunique paradigms to test differentfeatures, for example, what parts of thebrain are involved in motor activity orspeech.“The idea behind functional imaging isthat you can match areas of function tothe anatomic images we are acquiringand give neurologists a better idea ofwhat is going on in certain portionsof the brain,” says Neil Mardis, DO,pediatric radiologist. “So if you weregoing to plan for surgery, you couldmap the parts of the brain which areresponsible for specific activities orabilities and the locations of these areaswith respect to areas of pathology.”That information could then be usedto preserve more eloquent areas andpreserve function, or provide a betteridea of what sort of morbidity would beinvolved with surgery.Functional MRI may be useful in betterunderstanding differences in how thebrain works in autistic children, theeffect of resecting the seizure focusin the brain of a child with epilepticseizures, or determining thebest pathway to resect a tumor.Functional imaging is not inwidespread clinical use yet.Children’s Mercy has acquiredthe additional software to dofunctional imaging and Dr.Mardis hopes to start offeringfunctional MRI by fall 2011.“This is an advanced diagnosticprocedure. It is morecommonly used in patients witha known pathology or disorder,”he says. “If it is something youare considering, you shouldprobably discuss it with thespecialist or radiologist todetermine if it is going to yieldinformation that is clinicallyuseful.”Cartilage MappingCartilage mapping is a newtechnique which provides amore detailed look at cartilageto diagnose injuries at a muchearlier stage.“With cartilage disease, we were lookingat whether the cartilage is frayed,disfigured, or if there are cartilagedefects. The cartilage is alreadydamaged at this point,” says Dr. Mardis.“Using this new technique, we canlook at the microstructural makeup ofthe cartilage, and can see changes incartilage that happen before there ismacroscopic damage.”This could be important to injuryprevention as once cartilage is lost,growing it back is difficult and thecartilage that does grow back is not thesame.Children’s Mercy is also doing researchwith this technique to better understandthe makeup of healthy cartilage inchildren versus adults.For more information on MRI proceduresand these techniques, contactRadiology at (816) 234-3270.