CTSC:TTIC.090109

Back to Collaboration:Harvard_CTSC

Agenda

1. Consultations
2. DCE-MRI update
3. ISMRM case-based educational program
4. Informatics
5. MRI safety (download) here
6. Catalyst retreat on September 9

Harvard Translational Imaging Consortium Meeting Minutes September 1, 2009

In attendance:

• Valerie Humblet
• Gordon Harris
• Simon Warfield
• Jeff Yapp
• Wendy Plensiak
• Mark Anderson
• Randy Gollub
• Yong Gao
• Annick Van den Abbeele
• Gordon Williams
• Bill Hanlon
• Bob Lenkinski
• Ron Kikinis

1. Update on imaging consultation requests

• There was no new consultation this week.

3. MRI Safety

• Valerie put together a tutorial called: MRI safety, guidelines for safe MR pratice. The tutorial is based on he MRI safety training from BIDMC, MGH, CHB, MIT and BWH plus information from the RSNA withe paper on MRI safety.
• Members reviewed the slides.
  • Pregnancy is still controversial, especially when it comes to research and IRB approval. While pregnant women are scanned regularly for clinical reasons, the current guidelines are to exclude pregnant women from research studies. Each IRB establishes its own guidelines regarding the consent form. In some institution, if the women is not able to confirm that she is not pregnant and/or give the date of her last menstruation period, she is offered a pregnancy test. If she declines the test, she is not accepted in the study. In order to help investigator get IRB approval for their MRI scans, Valerie will collect IRB text fron BIDMC, Martinos Center and CHB to get some downloadable template on how to write the consent form the right way.
  • The FDA now recommends that magnetic field up to 8T (and not 4T anymore) are safe for individual 1 month and older
• Once the slides have been reviewed and vetted by all the members, we will submit the tutorial to the different institutions to get their approval. The next step will be to put in on the Catalyst website.