NIAGARA FALLS, N.Y. — Niagara County will be getting a first of its kind MRI machine for the county. On Tuesday, Niagara Falls Memorial Medical Center announced plans to build a new MRI imaging center with an acquired 3T Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) unit.
The $2.4 million project received a $400,000 grant from the John R. Oishei Foundation.
“The new MRI and center will greatly enhance the care of patients locally. This technology enables us to keep an even greater number of patients here at Memorial as opposed to transferring them out,” said Dr. Gerald Gorman, Chief of Emergency Services at NFMMC.
The new imaging center will be housed at Memorial's 10th Street campus. The new MRI unit will be the first one of its kind in Niagara County. It will help with faster diagnosis and provide higher quality scans.
The new unit will also help keep up with increased demand from the community.
“The new MRI imaging center will be state of the art. Locating the center at the NFMMC campus will allow for immediate access to advanced imaging for our in-house, ED, Heart Center and Oncology Center patients without the need to transport a patient to another site with the associated delay in diagnosis. The center will also provide an enhanced experience for outpatients,” said Dr. Mark Perry, Chief of Diagnostic Imaging at Memorial.
MRI scanning helps provide early detection of cancers and other diseases at stages when they can be treated.
In Niagara County, cancer mortality is higher than the state average for common types of cancer. Mortality for breast cancer is more than 18% higher and prostate cancer mortality rates are more than 27% the state rate. Lung cancer deaths in the county are almost 50% higher when compared to the state rate.
In addition to providing fast results and higher quality images, the machine is designed to make patients more comfortable. It has a more open configuration and faster scan times. The scans will also be less noisy. This will help people with anxiety and premitt scans to be done without use of sedation or anesthesia.
The benefits of the new machine do not stop there.
“In addition to Viz.ai and perfusion imaging to assess patients for urgent thrombectomy, the 3T MRI will give us the capability of diagnosing and treating minor to moderate strokes at NFMMC without the need for transfer,” said Dr. Kenneth Snyder, UBNS neurosurgeon and Memorial’s Medical Stroke Director.
The grant from the Oishei Foundation is in addition to a $125,000 commitment from from the James H. Cummings Foundation.
