St. Francis Medical Center hopes to buy a new magnetic resonance imaging system for an estimated $1.65 million.

The hospital has filed an application for a certificate of need to purchase the machine. A decision is scheduled to be made Oct. 18 by the Missouri Health Facilities Review Committee.

John Fidler, president of St. Francis, said St. Francis has been leasing MRI equipment for the five years it has offered the service. The lease is up. Fidler said if the application is approved, the new equipment could be running within a month.

"This wonderful computer lets you look through the body and see if anything needs to be fixed," Fidler said.

Hospitals must receive approval from the Health Facilities Review Committee before purchasing equipment that exceeds $400,000 in an effort to curb duplicated or unnecessary expenditures.

A magnetic resonance imaging system, commonly called an MRI, is used to look at soft tissue. A Cat scan looks at bones.

"There are times when you don't know whether a tumor is in bone or tissue, so the two technologies complement each other," Fidler explained.

"Our current GE scanner was state-of-the-art when we contracted for it," Fidler said. "But like any other new technology, it's constantly growing and advancing."

Fidler said St. Francis serves as a regional referral center, so its MRI needs to remain state-of-the-art. "We need more power for more resolution for detecting small abnormalities or small tumors," he said.

The Phillip's Gyroscan MRI system St. Francis hopes to buy has the most powerful magnet in use. The same system is used at top medical schools including the University of Boston and Northwestern University in Chicago.

The new scanners are faster, smaller and more patient friendly, Fidler said.

In the past, images of the abdomen were sometimes blurred when the patient breathed. The new system works faster, lessening that problem. Parents can be in the room with a child who is having an MRI done.

The system takes up less space than the existing unit, so little remodeling will be required. The other advantage is that the new MRI is less expensive to cool. The magnet creates heat and requires a cooling system called cryogen. The leased unit used three or four cryogens per year at $10,000 each. The new magnet can be cooled with just one per year.

The existing system has cost $850,000 for service over the past five years. The new contract calls for five years of service for $375,000.