Enabling Technology and Equipment Advances
iMRI Appeal
Past Appeal
We raised £1.5m to bring an intraoperative MRI (iMRI) to our hospital, to help transform life-changing brain tumour and epilepsy surgery.
Better accuracy during surgery
Our hospital is home to one of the largest paediatric neurosurgical centres in the UK, yet at the time, we were the only one without leading-edge intraoperative MRI technology.
The technology allows our surgeons to accurately and confidently identify, during surgical procedures, whether they have removed all of a patient’s brain tumour, right when they need the information the most.
Previously, our neurosurgeons would have to rely on pre-operative images to plan an operation. However, during surgery, the brain, which is soft, changes shape. This means, very quickly, the pre-operative information becomes outdated, making it less reliable.
The iMRI vastly reduces the time a patient is under anaesthetic, as well as the need for a second operation, sparing patients and families from going through another lengthy surgical procedure.
Benefits beyond surgery
We reached our £1.5 appeal total in less than a year and our scanner now sits inside our Loveday Street building, alongside a new, purpose-built operating theatre, which was needed to allow our surgeons to move patients directly to the scanner mid-surgery, making it ‘intraoperative’.
When the MRI machine is not being used for brain tumour or epilepsy operations, it is used to scan other patients from across the hospital. We have wrapped it with a gorgeous sunset design, which was created in collaboration with and chosen by our brave patients, to help soothe our patients during their scan.
