Portable MRI machine could revolutionize health care, Ontario doctors say

Swoop, a portable MRI scanner created by Hyperfine in the U.S., can be wheeled to patients to perform the scan instead of the other way around.

TORONTO — A portable MRI machine that brings imaging to a patient’s bedside has the potential to revolutionize health care both in major hospitals and in remote areas of the country, doctors say.

Swoop, a portable MRI scanner created by Hyperfine in the U.S., can be wheeled to patients to perform the scan instead of the other way around.

“This is a game-changer. It truly is,” said Dr. Tim Dowdell, the radiologist-in-chief with St. Michael’s Hospital, which received the machine at the end of March. “This is the disruptive technology that we need right now.”

The machine works only on the brain, said Dr. Aditya Bharatha, the head of diagnostic neuroradiology at the hospital.

“It gives us images of the brain that allow us to make immediate decision-making in situations where we might otherwise either not be able to get the image at all or where it might take much longer to get the image because the patient has to be transported,” he said.

Conventional magnetic resonance imaging machines are massive units that require special rooms with a large Faraday cage to protect others from the powerful magnet, reinforced floors to support its weight and cryogens to keep the magnets cool, Bharatha explained.

Compared to St. Michael’s four conventional MRIs, the new machine has a much weaker magnetic field — similar to that of a common refrigerator.

The images it produces are nowhere near the resolution of the conventional scanners, but they are “good enough” for many purposes, Dowdell said.