GE Healthcare introduces new MRI technique for joint replacement

Orthopedics Today—May 16, 2013

GE Healthcare in collaboration with Hospital for Special Surgery introduced Mavric SL, a new MRI technique designed to image soft tissue and bone in patients with joint replacement and other implanted devices.

Designed in response to the growing clinical need for assessing soft tissue and bone in patients with MR Conditional implants, the Mavric SL helps reduce artifacts caused by the presence of metal in both in-plane and through-plane dimensions. It was designed to produce high signal-to-noise ratio and excellent image integrity, allowing visualization of more tissue in the vicinity of MR Conditional metal instrumentation. The Mavric SL is non-invasive, radiation-free and needle-free as it requires no contrast media injection.

“We have shown [that Mavric] is the most accurate means of which to assess wear induced devices and, indeed, bone loss, counterintuitive. It can detect compression of nerves and often these are patients that come in and they have an adverse tissue reaction compressing a large nerve. They get their spines scanned and they get MRs of the spine and CAT scans and myelogram or sometimes are just told it’s all in their head, and now we can give an answer for that pain,” Hollis Potter, MD, chief of MR Imaging at Hospital for Special Surgery, said at a press conference. “We know that the adverse tissue reactions can occur in all bearing constructs and that the radiographic measurements, the presence of symptoms and, indeed, serum metal ion levels are not predictive of the magnitude of that reaction. In my experience, and I think we’ve shown substantial data to indicate that the use of Mavric, for me, is an essential adjunct to optimize traditional MRI techniques to actively diagnose and help these patients.”

Read the full story at helio.com (subscription required).

Read the news release on the study.