Dear users

We are, fortunately, being increasing asked to provide clinical scanning slots for the NHS and for Lodestone. This has the desirable effect of providing income. It has the disadvantage that there is less flexibility in being able to offer slots for research scanning, especially when the research is part of a pilot project that is unfunded.

The agreement with Lodestone is that they will attempt to use free slots left after the Thursday noon cut-off for booking by research PIs. Please book your time for the week ahead by booking before Thursdays at noon. Lodestone will then take the remaining slots for single case work. The only exception to this is Lodestone NHS work which will continue to occupy half day slots so that block booking of patients can be used several weeks ahead of time.

There is little pressure on scanners in the evenings (at the moment). If you are a trained operator then please consider using evening slots for your research. If you wish to become trained in operating MRI then please let us know so that we can start a training course for those interested. The advantage is that evening scanning is cheaper, at the moment.

Gary