What is the difference between an MRI and fMRI?

hello , my name is lori and i am scheduled for an mri on the 18 of this month and i know from having done this before that you are suppose to take off all jewlery and when i called the mri department and told them i can not take off my wedding ring and i asked then if i had to cut it off in order to have the test and she told me no it is ok i could leave it on.is that true or due i have it cut off? won't it mess up the machine? also i had gastric by-pass 1yr. ago and surgical staples are still in me and they will be there for life what about them? will the machine rip them out of me? please find out for me .it is very important that i find out right away. thank you very much. lori

MRI procedures aren't like surgery, so the staples can't be ripped out of you. Though I don't know, I'd predict that the doctors intentionally used staples that wouldn't cause problems in an MRI. As for the wedding ring, I'm guessing that since it's probably not made out of magnetic material, it won't have a huge effect on the results of the MRI either.

If I were you, I'd trust the MRI technician.

Anyone else have any expertise in this area?

My daughter is to have a MRI scan on her knee and is extremely clastrophobic.If its is just her knee would she still have to go through that tunnel totally or would they just scan her knee?

for knee MRIs you'll go in up to your chin, but your head will be out of the machine. it's really not that bad.

I was told MRI isn't recommended to check the lungs----I would appreciate your input on this. Thank You.

I work at an MRI center. There are many metal objects that can safely go into an MRI scanner. The issue is what kind of metal is it.

If it is attracted to a magnet, it should not even go into the room, much less into the scanner. Items that are real gold or real silver are not attracted to magnets, therefore safe to be in the room. (Like your wedding ring.) Also, implants such as knee implants, hip implants, staples and many other surgically implanted items often can be safely entered into the magnetic field. Since the advent of MRI and it being used so much, most surgical implants are of titanium, and not a problem. NO implants are put into the machine without documentation that the implant has been tested(endlessly and carefully in thorough research) that it is safe in a particular strength machine. Another consideration is that there are different 'strengths' (called 'Tesla') of machines. And a 3T machine is exponentially stronger than a 1.5T (which is common).

Bottom line - don't try to figure it out yourself. If you have anything that you weren't born with in or around your body, tell the technologist performing your scan before going into the room!!! They are responsible for your being safe. They have endless books and studies they can reference to know if an item is safe to be in the scanner room or not. Consider all the kinds of implants people can have now; stents, portacaths, staples, pins and rods, joint replacements, plates, etc, etc. If you tell the tech everything in or around your body, trust me, they will not Let you enter the room unsafely.

That said, you may have something like a 'safe to go into the room' pin in your leg, but they can't do your scan. That's because while the pin in your leg is safe to be in the machine, if you're getting a scan of the same part of the body where the metal is, it will distort the imaging, making it undiagnostic. (unable to give you information about the injury or reason you were scanned.) The metal distorts the imaging/picture.

Your safety is in the hands of you and your technologist. You - to let them know about anything on you that you weren't born with; and them - to make sure they don't put anything unsafe into the machine. In the 19 years I've worked in MRI - the only errors were made by people not letting the techs know about something. Never an error of a tech putting something into the machine that should not be there.

I just had an MRI of my right knee done. The images came out kind of blurry (according to the tech) and it's probably because I couldn't keep my leg completely still during the scans. After the MRI was done and I got back to work I realized that I remembered that I had put a safety pin on my blouse (above my chest and below my neck) in the morning and I had it on during he MRI. Would this have caused the blurred images? Would it cause any other problems?