People with poor hearing that can benefit from cochlear implants always knew that getting an MRI scan post implantation would either be impossible or would require a surgical procedure to temporarily remove the implant’s magnet. This fact can sway decisions whether to go with cochlear implants and can limit diagnostic abilities of physicians if a referral for an MRI comes with a surgery. Those days may be over as MED-EL (Innsbruck, Austria) received FDA approval to begin marketing its SYNCHRONY MRI conditional cochlear implant that can safely go inside 3.0 Tesla scanners without having to have its magnet removed.

Typically, the field within the scanner will act on the magnet of the device, turning it and with it the entire implant. Moreover, the strength of the field can demagnetize the magnet if they’re not aligned. The SYNCHRONY device features a magnet that can spin within its housing that naturally aligns with the MRI field. This prevents potential problems like tugging at the entire implant and demagnetization. The magnet can still impact the image quality of scans of the head, so the implant has a housing for the magnet that can be removed and filled with a spacer.

source:MED-EL