Mark Smith¹, Harry Hu², Ram Krishnamurthy¹, John Pitts³, and Mai-Lan Ho^1
1Nationwide Children's Hospital, Columbus, OH, United States, ²Hyperfine, Dublin, OH, United States, ³Hyperfine, Cleveland, OH, United States

Recently, a portable 64mT ultra-low field MRI system received 510K clearance (Hyperfine, Guilford, CT). This is a point of care (POC) system designed for bedside use, affording neuroimaging to patients in circumstances where conventional MRI is not possible.  Our pediatric institution (Nationwide Children’s Hospital) recently acquired one of these systems, with the intent to meet neuroimaging needs for critically ill NICU or PICU patients who cannot tolerate transport to the MRI department.  Most of these patients are on continuous monitoring and / or life support, requiring that electronic equipment and associated hardware remain operational and connected to the patient during the bedside MRI exam.  Prior to scanning patients with the portable MRI, safety testing should be conducted on monitoring hardware likely to be in place during the bedside MRI, especially hardware that is MR unsafe for conventional high-field MRI.   Our initial tests on this portable ULF MRI scanner revealed no safety concerns due to displacement or heating, apart from the ECMO CentriMag pump. In a patient setting, positioning the CentriMag pump and the integrated ECMO system apparatus at least one meter in distance from the scanner edge is recommended.  All the hardware tested above is MR unsafe or conditional at 1.5T and 3T.  Other equipment that we have not tested but we consider potentially unsafe include Camino ICP monitors, LVAD, cardiac pacing wires and the Pleuraflow Chest tube with magnetic strip.