While some specialist devices, such as biopsy kits and needles produced by DAUM, do exist there are few general instruments available. Significant investment will be required to develop new products and get them through all the regulatory tests, then, once approved, the market for them will be very small. “Interventional MR has not grown a lot within the last ten years and, given the practical problems, you do wonder whether it is ever really going to take off,” Keevil warns.
Spanner in the works
Even if interventional MRI never reaches its true potential, open systems still greatly improve the patient experience and offer examinations impossible by any other means. Not surprisingly then, the number of open systems in clinical use is steadily increasing. But what can we expect in the future?
Developments in the MRI field are driven both by the needs of the end-users and by advances in science and materials, says Blasche from Siemens. “We take care to understand the needs of our customers in different institutions, different countries, and with different healthcare systems,” he says. “At the same time, we closely watch new developments and learn from experience. The best solutions are created when all these factors match perfectly.”
“We see a trend towards higher magnetic field strength,” continues Blasche. “Twenty years ago, most routine scanners were sold at 1 tesla (T). Ten years ago, 1.5T became the clinical standard and is still approximately two-thirds of the world market, but the share of 3T systems has increased to approximately 20 per cent over the last few years.”