Healthy Habits: Headphones and MRIs

Over the years Audeze, whose R&D and manufacturing center is based in Orange County, CA, has developed award-winning Planar headphones coveted highly by musicians, sound engineers, and audiophiles for their high quality sound. Audeze is launching a new series of Electrostatic headphones called CRBN.

Prof. Mark S. Cohen Ph.D., UCLA Depts of Psychiatry, Neurology Radiology, Psychology, Biomedical Physics and BioEngineering, is a pioneer in the field of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and neuroscience. He is also the Co-Founder and Chief Scientist at SMRT Image where he is helping to solve some of the most challenging patient comfort problems with MRI.

Working with Dr. Cohen and his team at SMRT Image, Audeze helped develop new headphones that alleviate many of the acoustic issues associated with MRI testing.

I had a chance to learn more in this interview.

Why were these headphones developed?:
Patient anxiety and discomfort due to noise and claustrophobia are significant challenges in MRI. In such exams, when patients do not remain still, motion artifacts often degrade the images and can even make the scans unusable for diagnostic purposes. Stress and anxiety can cause patients to abort a scan, or to refuse studies altogether. MRI machines are extremely loud: their sound pressure levels can exceed 120 dB, similar to a jack hammer a few feet away.

MRI machines are by nature an exceptionally hostile environment for any electronics. They require enormous magnetic and electrical fields to make their medical images. Further, MRI scans are highly sensitive to electrical noise, which can compromise image quality. Because of this, any headphones used inside the scanners must be devoid of any ferrous materials. Moreover, eddy currents can also be induced in metal parts, creating image quality problems.

Why can music be helpful during the MRI process?
The CRBN headphones are integrated into the Lumica AV system from SMRTImage that provides images and movies in addition to audio and communication options, resulting in a fully-immersive audiovisual experience that is both comforting and distracting for the anxious MRI patient.

What sets these headphones apart from other options that makes them particularly helpful for the MRI process?
The SMRTImage team worked with a variety of MRI labs to refine the design of the headphones to be compatible with the majority of scanners and exams - usable with body coils, surface coils, and some head coils. The Audeze/SMRT over-the-ear models provide state-of-the-art passive and active noise reduction techniques. Audeze's new CRBN films are very versatile, and can be used to create transducers of different sizes including smaller headphones that fit smaller heads of pediatric patients.

You can also find more details in the official press release.