Quality Assurance Checks

The following quality assurance checks assure the optimum performance of the MR instrument. If the checks are conducted once a month respectively week, there is a high probability to detect defects of the MR instrument at an early stage and, therefore, to avoid the acquisition of corrupted MR data. For this purpose it is useful to log the results of the verified characteristics over time.

Object or Function

What is checked?

Recommended Interval

QA Phantoms

  • Check filling state.
  • Refill with original sample fluids.
  • Replace liquid and gel phantoms after one year.

Monthly

RF coil performance

  • Clean surfaces.
  • Check for visual damage.
  • Perform QA SNR measurements as described in the ParaVision software manual. For the instructions and specifications of the individual MRI RF Coil see the MRI RF Coil DVD.

Weekly

Imaging and spectroscopy characteristic

  • Perform the QA image artifact tests using the provided QA phantoms as given in the acceptance procedure.

Every 1 – 3 months

Software

  • Archive data.
  • Check disk space.
  • Remove non-active user accounts.
  • Clean the personal data, protocols, methods, coil configurations, etc. up.

Every 1 – 3 months