MRI CLINICALS

I scanned a brachial plexus yesterday. The patient received contrast for this exam because he had a history of a tumor removed from the lateral axillary area one year ago. Because of the location of the area of interest we had to increase our field of view, change our centering to lower and more lateral, and also increase the slices of many of the series. Our routine brachial plexus has very long scans to begin with, so when we began changing parameters the scans became even longer, some over six minutes. The patient was very cooperative. After contrast we ran scans in all three plains with additional fat saturated images in the coronal plane. From what I could tell the tumor had not returned. This was a good learning experience because it was not a typical brachial plexus. I had to use critical thinking to modify the scans to meet the needs of the radiologist, so that he could give an accurate diagnosis.