Concordance Between MR Safety Guidance Documents on Conditions for a Safe MR Environment

BACKGROUND: Environmental conditions established at facility design, construction, updates, and/or procurement of specialized equipment are the foundation of safe MR practice. Establishing an institutional MR safety program must take into consideration the conditions of the MR environment, and staff training should be tailored to its features. PURPOSE/HYPOTHESIS: To identify the concordance on conditions for a safe MR environment among a variety of widely known national guidance documents. STUDY TYPE: Analysis of guidance documents. POPULATION/SUBJECTS/PHANTOM/SPECIMEN/ANIMAL MODEL: Not applicable. FIELD STRENGTH/SEQUENCE: Not specific to field strength. ASSESSMENT: Information was extracted from national MR safety guidance documents about the expected conditions in a safe MR environment, and categorized among (1) facility design, (2) MR equipment selection, and (3) peripheral equipment. Commonalities and differences were identified. STATISTICAL TESTS: Descriptive statistics. RESULTS: Six publicly available national guidance documents for MR safety were obtained, from countries with relatively high density of MR systems (between 9 and 38 MR systems per million inhabitants): Australia, New Zealand, Sweden, Switzerland, UK, and USA. Full or partial concordance was observed among many measures related to facility design (21/25 conditions), MR equipment features (7/9 conditions), and peripheral equipment (10/13 conditions). DATA CONCLUSION: This work identified the common and divergent recommendations on facilities and equipment from a variety of guidance documents from national sources. Highlighting common (and uncommon) features recommended by guidance can help users identify weaknesses in their MR environment. This could inform jurisdictions/countries without official guidance and serve in the development of future guidance documents or MR safety training materials. EVIDENCE LEVEL: 5. TECHNICAL EFFICACY: 1.