Mounds View senior honors sister’s memory with MRI app to calm kids
Michael Cao remembers how brave his sister was as she battled cancer, before she died at age 11 in 2009, but he also recalls the thing that scared her most: the tight confining tube of an MRI scanner.
His sister, Amy, panicked during her first scan, at age 10, and couldn’t finish it. Her terror became an obstacle throughout treatment.
“That first traumatic experience set the tone for a lot of other MRIs that she had,” said Cao, 17, now a senior at Mounds View High School. “They became very difficult for her.”
So, in her memory, Cao sought a solution: something that would save other children from suffering the same anxiety. The result is an app that syncs with virtual reality (VR) goggles, providing children interactive simulations of MRI scans before they go through the real ones. Gillette Children’s Specialty Healthcare in St. Paul now offers it to all children scheduled for the scans.
The app gives children a digital simulation of entering an MRI, accompanied by the real whirs, beeps and buzzes that a scanner makes.
See the full story here: http://www.startribune.com/mounds-view-senior-honors-sister-s-memory-with-mri-app-to-calm-kids/496746921/