Department of Medical Imaging Magnetic Resonance Imaging Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital Brisbane, Queensland, Australia

The RBWH MRI Department is Public hospital based and is a federally funded, Medicare rebate accredited site.

It is a two-magnet site: a Siemens Vision 1.5T, and a shared with CMR University of Queensland, Siemens Sonata 1.5T.  The Siemens Sonata unit was installed in 2001.

The Medicare rebatable unit is a Siemens Vision Plus 1.5T, which began service in 1992.  This unit was moved to its current location, which is on Level 3 of the Ned. Hanlon Building of the New Hospital, and is on the Department’s capital replacement expenditure list.

We are six full-time MRI technologists and one part-time MRI technologist.  Our technologists hold Level 1 MRI accreditation with the Australian Institute of Radiography.  Raymond Buckley, Karen Franklin, Chris Stockton, Peter Leslie, Russell Brown, Philippa Boland, and Clare Berry are the staff members.  Postgraduate MRI education is encouraged by the MRI unit.

Brisbane is a 1.2 million population city, and the RBWH has large Neuro, Ortho, and Oncological clinics, which are the primary referral centers.  The onsite campus of the Women’s and Children’s Hospitals, generate MRI imaging referrals from these sites.

Fetal imaging has been a specialty of the MRI dept, including two sets of conjoint twins and a successful live birth of an extra-uterine pregnancy.

The Centre for Fetal Diagnosis and Treatment, and Diagnostic Imaging Department, provide the radiological fetal diagnosis for MRI.

Fig. axial T2HASTE. ( FSE).Bilateral, lateral Ventriculomegally. Fetal brain.