First of all, I'm so sorry for your losses. I can't imagine how devastating that must be (coming from someone who just lost two parents to cancer and went through treatment himself earlier this year).
Open standards would be awesome. I thankfully went through treatment at an integrated system so everything was just "in the system" for all of my doctors, but if I were hopping around between systems that would be extremely useful.
As far as the video thing, the only reason I can imagine is because MRIs are basically huge magnets so they have to build the whole thing out of non-ferrous materials. Plus the customary medical equipment mark up, but still that can't actually be $40k.
> As far as the video thing, the only reason I can imagine is because MRIs are basically huge magnets so they have to build the whole thing out of non-ferrous materials. Plus the customary medical equipment mark up, but still that can't actually be $40k.
There is another solution, which is to use a reflective surface at 45 degrees to your eyes and a video projector the other end of the room focused down the scanner. A few years ago I volunteered for a functional MRI brain scan which required me to watch various video clips, that's how they did it for me. I guess it might be slightly cheaper, but knowing medical equipment maybe not.
The giant rotating ring of magnets is about 8 inches in front of your face when you're getting a head MRI so there isn't much room to get things focused properly.
Or perhaps a periscope, so the patient sees a view of the room, rather than the inside of the magnet? The periscope could be built out of plastic, like a fat optical fibre, with the reflection being done by "total internal reflection" at the plastic/air interface. That way there are no metallic reflecting layers in it.
Open standards would be awesome. I thankfully went through treatment at an integrated system so everything was just "in the system" for all of my doctors, but if I were hopping around between systems that would be extremely useful.
As far as the video thing, the only reason I can imagine is because MRIs are basically huge magnets so they have to build the whole thing out of non-ferrous materials. Plus the customary medical equipment mark up, but still that can't actually be $40k.