MR imaging of excessively obese patients: the use of an open permanent magnet

Excessive obesity can pose a limitation to both clinical and radiographic evaluation. Although CT and MR have revolutionized head and body imaging, patients with weights above 300 lb present a restriction of these imaging modalities. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is well suited for imaging excessively obese patients, because the RF used does not have difficulty in penetrating large amounts of adipose tissue as ionizing radiation or sound waves does. The limitations of conventional MR imaging in these obese patients are the gantry size and the table weight limit. The recent development of a new low field MR imager with a larger gantry size and greater weight capacity, has the potential for imaging obese patients that cannot be evaluated by standard CT or MR. In this paper, we report our experience in imaging nine excessively obese patients with weights between 350 and 490 lb using a permanent magnet operating at 0.064 T.