MRI will scan brains in mid-operation

Two weeks before Children's Hospital Boston opens its new 11-story clinical building, officials last week unveiled what they're calling the ''OR of the future" for brain surgery. The $5 million operating room is equipped with a unique magnetic resonance imaging system, or MRI, that can be wheeled in and out of the room on tracks in the ceiling so that surgeons can take fresh pictures of the brain in the middle of an operation.

''By being able to see . . . the effectiveness of a surgery and going back if necessary to improve on our work, we can save patients from having to return . . . at a later point," explained Dr. Michael Scott, the hospital's chief of neurosurgery.

The new OR is part of a 240,000-square-foot expansion set to open June 29 across Longwood Avenue from the current hospital, adding 48 new inpatient beds as well as intensive-care units, catheterization suites and lots of patient and family amenities, such as bed space for parents in children's rooms and video game consoles for the kids.

But the 7.5-ton MRI, unlike any other brain imaging system in the United States, is the star attraction. Traditionally, surgeons who wanted an MRI image had to either send the patient out during an operation or perform the surgery amid the magnets using nonmagnetic tools. In the new Children's operating room, surgeons use their usual equipment, then stow it in booms that can be swung away from the powerful magnetic field around the imaging equipment.

'Quick million' pays off for Boston Medical

Steve and Joan Belkin already had promised $1.5 million toward the new Moakley Center when grateful Boston Medical Center officials went back to the Weston couple with one more request: Can you give us another million? Officials said they needed ''a quick million" to put themselves in position to win another big grant for the center, which will focus on cancer care.

Last week, that quick million paid off, as the Kresge Foundation awarded the hospital the $2.5 million grant, underscoring a dramatic improvement in private fund-raising at a hospital that has long served the city's poorest population. The hospital has raised more than $100 million in the last six years compared to just $500,000 in 1998, the last year before the hospital formalized its development efforts.

The hospital will name the Breast Health and Imaging Center in the Moakley Center after the Belkins -- he founded Boston-based Trans National Group, and she cochairs the hospital's Leadership Council, a fund-raising group.

Big gifts for UMass emergency room

Just two donations have carried UMass Memorial Medical Center more than half way to its $40 million fund-raising goal in building one of New England's biggest emergency departments. Last week, the Worcester hospital announced a $10 million donation from the Remillard Family Foundation, led by former insurance executive Arthur J. Remillard Jr., just six months after former car dealership owner David ''Duddie" Massad, president of Commerce Bank & Trust and former owner of Duddie Ford, gave $12.5 million.

UMass's emergency room was built in 1970 for an anticipated 2,000 patients a year, but it now serves 75,000 annually and the number is growing fast.

In response, the hospital launched plans for a $129 million emergency and trauma center, expected to open early next year.

SCOTT ALLEN