Procedure for conducting CT/MRI examinations

How to prepare an animal for CT/MRI?

▫️ Follow a fasting diet as recommended by your referring doctor or according to current recommendations, which can be found here

▫️ MRI/CT for dogs and cats is performed under anesthesia, under the supervision of doctors from the anesthesiology department. Before the procedure, the animal is examined by an anesthesiologist. Bring the results of previous tests (if they were not performed at Zoolux). If you do not have them, the necessary tests can be done at the appointment.

▫️Be sure to bring a referral from your doctor indicating: differential diagnoses, the area to be examined, and the need for contrast material.

Test procedure

▫️ Tests are performed throughout the day on a first-come, first-served basis.

▫️ Patients from the intensive care unit are served first.

▫️ Animals are returned to their owners after the test is completed and the patient has fully recovered from anesthesia.

▫️ Animals can be returned to their owners until 9:00 p.m. on the same day.

▫️ The conclusion based on the images is prepared within 24–48 hours. All CT/MRI scans will be uploaded to a clinical cloud storage after the examination. Owners will be given recommendations with instructions on how to download the examination. Discs with images and built-in viewing software will be given to the owner when they pick up their pet after the diagnostic procedure.

▫️ The results of the examination can be viewed in your personal online account at Zoolex. There will be a clickable link in the owner's personal account to download the examination.

Why do CT and MRI results look different from X-rays? An X-ray is a series of separate images in the form of finished images. CT and MRI are entire “studies” consisting of hundreds of images in a special medical format.

They are not stored as separate photos, but as a set of files that must be opened in a special program.

How to view the results? The disc you receive after the procedure always has a built-in viewing program, and there are also free programs that you can download yourself.

Why might there be no images in the patient's file? Images appear in the electronic file only after the radiologist has completed the examination report. The radiologist then manually takes screenshots marking the pathological areas and adds them to the file along with the final report.

Fig. 1 MRI areas. Spine by areas C1-T3, T3-L3, L3-S1 (3 different)

Fig. 2 CT areas

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