X-rays for your eyes!

    Some may indeed find it surprising, but be assured that under
the conditions employed for medical MRI scanning (magnetic resonance
imaging), _any_  metallic item or particle will be pushed, pulled,
rotated, possibly heated, and maybe all of those at once. 

So, can a person with tattoos get an MRI safely?

–Noel

So, can a person with tattoos get an MRI safely? 

Yes. There may be a little redness, but other than that, no
problems. :slight_smile:

MonaLS

    So, can a person with tattoos get an MRI safely? 

Yup, apparently, the worst that’s ever been recorded amounts to a
couple of short-lived blisters where metal oxide pigment was
especially heavy, and that effect is uncommon. The Mythbusters TV
series actually ran heavily tattooed pig skin through a MRI to see
what would happen.

Ron Charlotte – Gainesville, FL
@Ron_Charlotte1 OR afn03234@afn.org

OK, Im worried enough about the iron and steel bits that might be in
my eyes and elsewhere from maybe 50 years ago. And I just recall
I’ve got stainless steel sutures in my hernia from 1972. Now I read
that non-ferrous metals can be moved and disturbed as well. Egads!
Plenty of them in there too. What about the fillings in my teeth
from before the days of miracle goop? Gold, silver and gawd knows
what else. Help! I better just stay healthy or become one of those
folks who trusts my faith more than my doctor and his gadgets… Are
there any MD’s or techies out there who can please jump in here with
the straight goods on this set of well-intended nightmares?

Marty in Victoria

    So, can a person with tattoos get an MRI safely? 

Yes. Being rather heavily tattooed (in the neighborhood of 70%
covered), I survived a complete spinal MRI a couple of years ago
with no ill effects, pulling/pushing, rotating or heating up. Great
question, since many tattoo pigments are oxide-based.

Still, Gerry’s post was concerned with metals that are possibly
imbedded in the eyes, a somewhat more fluid, albeit viscous tissue
than skin. On the other side, I do file, polish and grind metals,
and had been doing so for many years before having the MRI done. And
I rarely use eye protection. In fact, I’ve had plenty of it flying
into my eyes for a very long time. Either I’m very lucky, or none of
it has gotten stuck inside. That, or I still have thick calluses on
my corneas from those ancient hard contact lenses I wore back in the
'70s and '80s.

James in SoFl

   So, can a person with tattoos get an MRI safely? 

The answer is yes. There is a program on Discovery channel named
Mythbusters and they take urban myth type questions like this and
try to prove or disprove them. They recently tried this one. The
answer is that the only tattoo compound that reacts to MRI is the
Iron oxide inks and in the quantity used in a tattoo they have no
effect. You need to have a huge quantity of the stuff under the skin
to have any reaction. So in their words " Myth busted"

Billy in Denver

   So, can a person with tattoos get an MRI safely? 

Yes you can.

If there are traces of metal in the tattoo, which it seems is
occasionally so in black or dark pigments, the tattoo sill get very
slightly warmer but nothing more than that.

I saw this demonstrated on the Discovery channel a few months ago.

Sandra