(794) Feasibility and Clinically Utility of Low-Field MRI in Critically Ill Children

Introduction: A low-field portable MRI (pMRI) system has been approved for clinical use. However, its feasibility, efficacy and ideal use in children remains unknown. We aim to assess the experience of using pMRI at the bedside and evaluate its efficacy in diagnosing acute brain injury (ABI) in critically ill children compared to standard neuroimaging, conventional magnetic resonance imaging (cMRI) and or computed tomography (CT) scan

Methods: In this prospective cross sectional study children (aged 0-18 years) admitted in hospital, between May 2021 – June 2022, whose cMRI or CT scan brain was done and underwent pMRI scans within a 24-hour window of standard neuroimaging were included. Clinically unstable and agitated children were excluded. pMRI Images were reported by a blinded pediatric radiologist, standard neuroimaging was reported as per routine. The agreement between the reports of two modality was assessed using kappa-statistic.

Results: Among 108 eligible patients, 88 underwent pMRI, 85 (96.6%) patients completed scan and 73 included in final analysis. Mean age was 4.8 (±5.2) years. Neuroimaging indications were; unexplained encephalopathy 29 (39.7%), seizures 38 (52.1%), focal neurologic deficit 19 (26%). The pMRI scan time was 51.3 minutes (14.7), provisional diagnosis of edema 27 (37.0%), hydrocephalus 12 (16.4%), Infarction 13 (17.8%), midline shift 13 (17.8%), intra-parenchymal hemorrhage 7 (9.6%), were made through pMRI. Compared to a standard neuroimaging, most pMRI findings agreed with an overall moderate agreement 73.91% (k 0.406, P 0.0003) between both modalities

Conclusions: pMRI is safe and feasible bedside imaging modality that shows promising results for diagnosing ABI in children.