Facility

The office at 900 Rand Road in Des Plaines, Ill., is a new Illinois Bone and Joint Institute (IBJI) facility which opened December 2008. This facility contains not only IBJI physicians, but also a fully equipped MRI department, as well as physical therapy. The MRI office scans nearly 200 patients a month on its new 1.5T Hitachi Echelon High Field MRI system.

MR Department

The Illinois Bone and Joint Institute implemented its first MRI unit in February of 1999, as part of the expansion of their ancillary division. As orthopedic groups started affiliating with IBJI, MRI services grew in strength and expanded in magnitude.Today IBJI has 7 MRI sites through out the Chicagoland area. Our first MRI facility was opened in February 1999in Des Plaines, which moved to a new facility December 2008, still in Des Plaines. The second opened in Glenview (2001); third and fourth opened in Libertyville and Morton Grove (2002); fifth in Gurnee (2004); sixth in Arlington Heights (2005); and seventh in Bannockburn (2007).As a health care business, IBJI's simple philosophy is to ensure our patients' health by providing proper care and good business practices.

Why did you choose Hitachi's High-Filed Echelon?

We don't just buy systems based on relationships –we buy based on quality and service levels. In our opinion, Echelon has more quality driving features than other systems we looked at–GE, Siemens and Philips. One example is the RADAR feature, used to minimize patient motion artifact. With Echelon, you can use RADAR on all the coils and in all planes, and with many of the sequences. This flexibility just was not available with the other vendors.

How has Echelon impacted your MR department?

Prior to installing Echelon, volume had fallen to only 3-4 scans per day. Our old 0.3T scanner just could not compete with a recently installed 3T nearby. We upgraded to Echelon 1.5T and physicians who were referring to the 3T now see image quality advantages in our 1.5T as compared to the 3T. We now average 9-11 patients per day, an up to 3-fold increase.