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MRI Scanning Technology Applied to Animals
 
Oakland Tribune
Bay Area • Alameda, San Mateo • Silicon Valley
By Francine Brevetti

REDWOOD CITY -- KRISTI could no longer move her head from side to side. And Jim Hazley, her companion of over 11 years, could tell that she was walking in pain.

"Every time I pick her up, she whimpers or yelps," the Los Altos resident said of his family's pet beagle.

Since steroid treatment was no longer effective in treating the dog's herniated disc and he wanted to spare her the pain and stress of exploratory surgery, Hazley took advantage of the Iams Pet Imaging Center in Redwood City that opened two months ago. Kristi received an MRI.

Medical imaging technology that has been available to humans is now available to Bay Area cats and dogs through The Iams Co.

The company best known for pet food, and a subsidiary of Procter & Gamble, has two other Pet Imaging Centers, one in Vienna, Va., and the other in Raleigh, N.C., at North Carolina State University's veterinary hospital. These two older establishments have done more than 5,000 MRI procedures on pets. Iams claims the Redwood City center is the first such facility in the West Coast.

The market is sizable. Iams estimates that nearly 2 million dogs and cats live in the approximately 1.6 million households in the counties of Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, San Francisco and San Mateo, based on U.S. Census data and industry formulas established by the U.S. Pet Ownership and Demographics Sourcebook (American Veterinary Medical Association). Although the MRI equipment used is the same as used for humans, the procedure has rarely been done on animals. Liesa Stone, Iams technical service veterinarian, said the availability throughout the world has been “very limited. A lot of veterinarians do this at a human hospital after hours or at the vet hospitals that have them.”

MRI, or magnetic resonance imaging, is a noninvasive diagnostic tool that can detect anomalies in soft tissue where an X-ray is not effective. Its use on animals has been particularly instructive for the veterinary community. “We used to assume that dogs and cats did not have strokes,” Stone said. “But now we see brain tissue through MRIs and we see that they do. We are visualizing tumors and how to treat them.

“We can visualize rotator cuff injuries on dogs and nerve sheath tumors. We can do myelograms. That is, we can visualize the spinal cord without having to inject dye the way we used to,” Stone said, attributing all of these advances to the implementation of MRI technology. At the Redwood City center, Hazley sat in the lobby while Kristi was being anesthetized and mounted into the huge doughnut-shaped magnet that is an MRI machine. Anesthesia is required for animals since they cannot be instructed to lie motionless.

Eventually, a door opened and the human companion was motioned into a large room where technicians sat before computer monitors studying a slice of Kristi's cervical spine on the screens. Directly ahead, a glass partition separated them from the magnet, the huge cylindrical MRI machine. The pane was lined with copper mesh to protect the magnet from interference. Within it, the beagle lay asleep, belly up and splayed, with an endotracheal tube of oxygen thrust into her little snout. She would stay in that state for up to 45 minutes. All this equipment, technology and manpower had been marshaled to save this little life some pain.

Instead of going through invasive surgery, Hazley opted for an MRI for Kristi once his vet told him of its availability. Hazley's procedure cost $1,200, on the low end for pet MRIs, which average between $1,- 500 and $1,800. The price depends on the size of the pet, the problem being screened and the complexity of the organ under examination. Pet insurance may cover part of it.

According to Stone, it's impossible to do a cost-to-cost comparison between imaging and surgery for diagnostic purposes. “Because after you do the invasive surgery for diagnosis, you may need other tests,” she said.

After Kristi's imaging process was complete, the small patient was lain upon a pad in a recovery room where Hazley sat to welcome her when she awoke.

“She wobbled a bit at first, but as soon as she was able to walk, we were free to go,” he said.

Iams is using its MRI technology in conjunction with the University of Pennsylvania and the Canine Health Foundation of the American Kennel Club. The organizations are studying cancer rates of rescue dogs employed at the Pentagon and World Trade Center after the 9/11 disaster.

“The study is halfway through and will end in 2006. We have also offered free scans to all the rescue dogs of that disaster that were not part of the study,” Stone said.

Iams uses the technology of ProScan, a company that reads and interprets the outcomes of MRIs. A CNN video clip on the World Trade Center rescue dogs and their MRI treatment can be seen here.




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