UP’s Onderstepoort Veterinary Academic Hospital gets its first MRI scanner

Abstract

The Onderstepoort Veterinary Academic Hospital (OVAH) of the University of Pretoria’s (UP) Faculty of Veterinary Science has acquired its first magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanner. This means that the hospital now no longer has to make special arrangements with human hospitals to perform MRI scans. “In South Africa, the use of MRIs for diagnostic purposes is limited to small animals, and most MRI scans are done in human facilities by special arrangement,” said Dr Paul van Dam, Director of the OVAH. “An MRI scan takes 45 minutes or longer, which limits the number of cases that can be referred. With our own MRI scanner, we can now do scans at any time of the day, on site, without the additional time to travel to another facility. An added advantage is that our MRI scanner will be the only high-field MRI in South Africa, and probably Africa, with image acquisition optimised for veterinary patients.”