Loveday Street

Work is continuing at pace on a £35 million project that is transforming our Children’s Hospital site on Loveday Street.

A new three-storey elective care hub, funded by the national COVID-19 recovery programme, will be home to a new state-of-the-art intraoperative MRI (iMRI) machine thanks to our Charity and supporters.

This will provide seamless patient care during surgery and reduce the need for some children to travel to other parts of the UK for treatment.

In addition, the hub will house new theatres, and a recovery area and the site will also be home to ground water heat plant that will enable the entire Children’s Hospital to be powered using sustainable energy.

What is an iMRI and why is it so important for those we care for?

Our expert neurosurgeons currently rely on pre-operative images to identify brain tumours. 

During surgery, the brain, which is soft, will change shape. This means that the pre-operative information becomes outdated very quickly, making it less reliable.   

With iMRI technology, an MRI scanner is moved directly to a child on an operating table, or a patient to the scanner, to ensure surgeons can obtain ‘live’ and up-to-date information about the position of the tumour.  

The need for state-of-the-art intraoperative MRI technology is simple. It allows our neurosurgeons to accurately and confidently identify, during a surgical procedure, whether they have removed all of the tumour, right when they need the information the most.