There was an accident in a small Swedish hospital a few years ago, the patient scheduled for the MRI arrived with a 13 kg / 28 lbs weighted vest that he for some reason persuaded the MRI nurse to put on (I believe they were friends at the gym). The nurse did, but during the MRI session he left the monitoring room and went in to talk to the patient – and got pulled in by the magnetic field. Almost got strangled to death.
Alarm went off, security guards came running – and were also pulled in… In the end it took hours to get everybody out, the nurse and one or two of the security guards were injured, and the MRI machine was damaged.
Every MRI machine has an emergency button labeled "Quench" that releases its liquid helium. After so doing, the MRI loses its superconductivity and anyone pinned to the machine should be released.
Everyone I know who's worked with MRIs has been tempted to press the button!
Interesting, I did not know that. However, the info also says:
> If a ferromagnetic object becomes stuck to the magnet, do not initiate a quench. Quenching will not necessarily release the object and can be extremely costly due to helium loss and potential system damage.
Wait so the people were pulled into the magnetic field? Were they wearing ferromagnetic metal items that were pulled in? And what does that have to do with the vest that the patient is wearing? If that is ferromagnetic, would that not just simply be stuck inside the MRI?
The nurse was wearing a weighted vest. Presumably the weights were metal of some sort. I can only imagine the sort of metal gear the security guards were wearing. Those guys love dangling stuff from their belt.
Alarm went off, security guards came running – and were also pulled in… In the end it took hours to get everybody out, the nurse and one or two of the security guards were injured, and the MRI machine was damaged.