Veterinary Technician wanting to learn more about our MRI

Nesta · Joined: 09 Oct 2005 Posts: 2

Hello,

I am a veterinary technician working in a specialty animal hospital which has our own MRI. Currently the DVM that I work for runs all the MRI's but I am interested in learning more about it so that I may be able to do that portion of his job someday. So I'm looking for a way that I can learn something new, be more of an asset to my employer and still be able to work with animals and continue to utilize all my previous training in veterinary medicine.

Are there any MRI programs, online or not, that may be helpful to me? And what would the requirements be?

I do not have any certification in human medicine, only veterinary medicine and veterinary anesthesia. And I have no intention of moving into the human field, I simply want to learn more about MRI so that I am capable of running the scans on our furry friends.

Veterinary MRI at this point is very new and the people who are doing it are constantly coming up with new protocols, because the protocols used in human medicine are very different from veterinary medicine. For example we use the knee coil to image dog and cat brains, and small dog and cat spines.

Because I will always be involved in veterinary medicine, and not human medicine I'm simply looking for a training program, certification is not necessary in veterinary medicine to run MRI's. I just want to know what I'm doing and how to get the best scans possible, but in order for me to do this, I need to know more about the machine and how to run and troubleshoot it. I have learned a little from working with the machine we have for the last 2 years, but no where near enough that I could sit down and run a scan by myself.

My employer could teach me some, (and is willing to do so), but he is a veterinary neurologic specialist and was taught how to run the scans by an MRI tech who occasionally helps us out; but he doesn't have the time to teach me or the ability to teach me as much as I would like to understand.

Sorry this post was so long. I hope that someone has some insight on how I might go about learning more about MRI. MRI has just recently started to become more common place in the veterinary field and I would like to be a part of that.

Thank you for any information.
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Lori Fuehrer CVT, VTS (anesthesia)