Do I Need to Purchase a Medium Sized MR Phantom?

Medical Physics Consultants, Inc

In the June issue of ACR’s Quality and Safety eNews, it was announced the ACR MRI Accreditation Program (MRAP) has developed a medium-sized phantom. ACR’s senior advisor for medical physics also shared important details about the medium phantom with the medical physics community in the March-April issue of the AAPM Newsletter (see page 25). The medium phantom is an important modernization and improvement to the program.  The medium phantom was developed specifically for use in modern phased array head coils and allows sites to acquire phantom images for accreditation and for quality control (QC) with the same coil that is used to acquire most clinical brain images. Sites will be required to use the largest phantom that fits inside the head coil.

ACR is in the final stages of developing a new accreditation database and customer called ACRedit Plus and the MRAP medium phantom option will be available once the new portal is live. In order to accommodate facility budget cycles the ACR will allow a one-year grace period from the release of ACRedit Plus for facilities to purchase the medium phantom and implement the appropriate changes to their QC program.   Details about the grace period and required QC program changes can be found here or by asking your friendly MPC MRI physicist.  Inquiries regarding medium phantom availability and pricing should be directed to the phantom manufacturer, JM Specialty Parts Inc.([email protected] 858-794-7200).