The Bane of the MRI Technician

Written by eklastic

The first time I heard the word quench had nothing to do with drinking or liquids or something similar. A quench is what happens when you have a helium cooled MRI tomograph and because of a malfunction the gas leaks and the machine has to be shut down and expensive helium has to be refilled after the fault was diagnosed and fixed. This was particularly catastrophic when it happened in Harare, Zimbabwe, because it meant that it would take days before new helium could be brought from Pretoria, South Africa, a drive of 1,100 km with the occasional giraffe or elephant crossing, a definite border crossing with hopefully little administrative delay. MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) is MRT (Magnetresonanztomographie) in German.

A rather nice side effect however, was that the escaping gas (at around -270°C – please stand back!) settled in the close vicinity as a form of snow (for a very short time).

Ragtag Daily Prompt: Quench

11 thoughts on “The Bane of the MRI Technician”

    1. It was in 1995 when my husband installed the first MRI in Zimbabwe. He was trained as an x-ray technician, switched to computer tomography when it was still in its infancy, and the last big development he joined was MRI technology.

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