This week I finished my phantom experiments and hopefully next week we will start imaging real tissue expanders on the MRI so we can compare the artifact produced by the phantom and the real object. Since the magnets are the same, we would expect the same amount of artifact. I have also discovered from my analysis that decreasing the bandwidth of the acquisition not only increases the artifact produced by the magnet but also distorts completely the image. This is a good thing to know for imaging patients the next time. Also, increasing slice thickness substantially increases resolution. We have learned a lot from this experiments and this has allowed us to improve the quality in order to see much better the chest wall.
We went to Columbia on Tuesday and we read some cases with the fellows out there. Yesterday we had a couple patients for breast reconstruction. Although only one of them had tissue expander, we couldn't image her since her implant was deposited only a week ago and she was in a lot of pain. Dr. Prince decided not to image her because the magnet could move and cause more pain to her. Normally he images patients that have had the implant fully expanded and ready to be removed. This is important because with the MRI there is a risk of damaging the expander and it cannot be further inflated.
On 4th of july we went to Roosevelt island to see the fireworks. Truly an amazing show!!
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