Magnetic force pulls man wearing metal chain into MRI machine at Nassau Open MRI in Westbury, critically injuring him, police say

A man wearing a metallic necklace was critically injured Wednesday in Westbury when an MRI scanner drew him inside the machine after he entered the testing room during a scan, according to Nassau County police.

The 61-year-old, who wasn't authorized to be in the room, was hospitalized in critical condition, the department wrote in a news release. His name wasn’t disclosed. The machine was being operated at Nassau Open MRI, inside a medical building at 1570 Old Country Rd. 

The incident happened at about 4:34 p.m. The police homicide squad is investigating.

"The male victim was wearing a large metallic chain around his neck causing him to be drawn into the machine which resulted in a medical episode," the release said. Further details weren't disclosed.

Spencer Scott, a worker at the facility, said by phone he didn’t know the man’s connection, if any, to the clinic, but said he wasn’t a patient. Scott said there might be video of the incident.

"I’ve never heard this happening in my life," he said.

MRI, which stands for magnetic resonance imaging, generates detailed images of the inside of the body by using strong magnets and radio waves.

To help patients who are claustrophobic or have other characteristics that make a traditional MRI difficult, open MRI machines are open at the sides instead of being a tube that's enclosed at one end so the patient is surrounded.

Injuries and deaths tied to MRI machines are rare but can occur when the magnets pull an object from inside the room — or from a patient’s person or body — at high speeds and create a projectile that can strike a person or dangerously move a medical device in the body. That is why patients are instructed to remove all metallic and electronic objects and are otherwise screened before a scan, and access to the room is restricted.

The American College of Radiology has developed a best practice, consisting of four “safety zones,” each with increasing restrictions and buffers, to prevent magnet-related hazards.

In the Northwell Health system, patients are screened twice with metal detectors and instructed to remove all clothing and don pocket-free paper scrubs. The door to the fourth zone — the actual MRI room — is locked shut during the procedure, said Melonie Longacre, Northwell’s vice president for operations at Glen Cove, Plainview and Syosset hospitals.

“It looks like a bank vault door,” she said.

Northwell, which operates hundreds of MRI machines and performs hundreds of thousands of scans per year, has never had a metal object turn into a projectile during a procedure in an MRI room, she said.

Nationwide, a 10-year review published in 2019 in the journal Medical Physics tallied about 141 "projectile events" involving MRI injuries that were reported to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

"Magnetic resonance imaging incidents are severely underreported," according to a 2021 study in the journal European Radiology.

Despite education campaigns, the number of adverse incidents has not been going down, said Dr. Emanuel Kanal, founder of the American Board of Magnetic Resonance Safety and director of Magnetic Resonance Services at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.

Objects that have been magnetized by the machine — and injured or killed people — have included aneurysm clips, oxygen tanks, handguns that discharged, wheelchairs and ICU beds, Kanal said.

Several pioneers of magnetic resonance imaging scanning technology, which can help diagnose cancer and other conditions, were Long Islanders, including Raymond Damadian, whose company, Melville-based Fonar, made the first commercial scanner in 1980, and Paul C. Lauterbur of Stony Brook University, who came up a way to translate into images the machine’s radio signals transmitted by the tissue, according to The New York Times. 

Newsday's Lauren Zola contributed to this story.

By Matthew Chayes

matthew.chayes@newsday.comchayesmatthew

Matthew Chayes, a Newsday reporter since 2007, covers New York City.