You can make an appointment right here on the website by clicking "Book an appointment" on the top right corner of this page. You can also give us a call at +1-604-227-3000 or send us an email at hello@prenuvo.com.

We are typically open from 7:00AM to 8:30PM Monday to Saturday and from 8:30AM to 4:30PM on Sunday. We are generally not open on public holidays. We occasionally open for extended hours to accommodate out-of-town guests, particularly around the holidays. Please give us a call at +1-604-227-3000 if you have any questions.

Yes. We are opened on Saturday and Sunday from 8:30AM to 4:30PM.

If you are flexible as to when you can come to the clinic, we can usually accommodate you within 1 to 2 weeks. You are able to see real-time availability by clicking "Book an appointment" in the top right corner of the page.

Through our online booking you can book up to 3 months in advance. If you would like to book further into the future you can do so by calling us at +1-604-227-3000 or emailing us at hello@prenuvo.com.

Yes. You must have a referral to have a Prenuvo scan. If you require, we can arrange a referral from an independent medical practitioner at no cost to you. It may seem like an unnecessary requirement, but it exists to look after you in the event there is a serious medical finding. A medical practitioner can assist you in understanding and contextualizing any finding.

Yes, you can book an appointment for another person. However you will need to give us that person's details, and we will need to contact them in order to get their patient history and ensue that the scan is appropriate for them.

Yes, please contact us at +1-604-227-3000 or hello@prenuvo.com to organize a gift certificate that you can give you a friend or loved one. We think this is the best gift you can give someone — the possibility of saving their lives through early detection of any cancers or disease.

We are happy to do our best to accommodate you. Please give us a call at +1-604-227-3000 to discuss your needs.

We offer 3rd party financing through MediCard. You can apply and find more information at www.medicard.com

Yes, we accept Visa, Mastercard and American Express.

We do accept cash, but we regret that we are unable to accept personal cheques.

Yes. We take 50% deposit to guarantee your appointment time and date. Last minute cancellations cannot always be filled.

Yes. Your deposit is 100% refundable or transferable up to three business days before your appointment. The time and date before you must cancel your appointment, while retaining your deposit, is included in the email confirmation we send you. After that time we regret that your deposit is no longer refundable or transferable.

We have a strict 3 business day cancellation policy. Provided that you contact us more than three business days before your scheduled scan, at which time your deposit becomes non-refundable and non-transferable, we are happy to accommodate changes or to refund your deposit.

If you are or suspect that you might be claustrophobic, you can request a mild sedative from your referring doctor to have with you for your Prenuvo scan. If necessary for your comfort, we can also reduce the scan time, but this will reduce the diagnostic value of the scan slightly. In all cases we regret that your deposit is non-refundable or transferable if you are unable to go through with your Prenuvo scan on the day.

Our Open Bore MRI accommodates up to 550 pounds (249 Kg).

No detrimental effects have been shown to have occurred due to having an MRI when pregnant. There is, however, a risk of causing hearing problems in the foetus. MRI can also increase the amniotic fluid temperature. Therefore, we avoid performing an MRI when you are pregnant unless your referring doctor decides the benefit of the MRI outweighs the potential risks associated with having the scan.

Unfortunately at this time we are unable to scan people with pacemakers. There is a risk that the MRI magnetic fields will disrupt its operation, and we don't want that.

It depends on the type of clip that has been implanted, so we would need to have more information about it. MRI can be performed safely in patients with non-ferromagnetic aneurysm clips.

It depends on the type of implant you have, so we would need to have more information about it. Even if it is safe to perform an MRI, the implant will likely affect the quality of imaging that we can do of the head.

There are many different types of implants. We will need to know more about what you have. The good news is that almost all implants are MRI safe. There is a chance the implant will affect the images we can get from the surrounding tissues.

It depends on the model. Some infusion pumps are MRI compatible. Regardless, we check the MRI safety of all devices. We will need to know the model before your scan.

It depends on the model. Some neurostimulators have an MRI mode that they can be put into before the scan. We will need to know the model before your scan.

Yes. Almost all IUDs are MRI safe. Regardless, we check the MRI safety of all devices. Common MRI safe IUDs are the Mirena and the Copper T.

If there is a chance that there are metal fragments in your body, particularly in the eyes, we will require a quick x-ray to ensure that it is safe for you to do a scan. The x-ray can be ordered if you contact us a week or two before your scan.

MRI generally is not advised for patients with epilepsy.

No. It is safe to have an MRI while dental implants are installed.

Yes. This is completely safe.

Yes people with tattoos can be scanned. There is a small chance of warming in the area of the tattoo but this very rarely occurs.

No. All MRIs are radiation free.

Cellphones are allowed to heat the head to 1.6 watts per kilogram. MRI is allowed to heat 3.2 watts per kilogram. By this extension, if you are comfortable speaking on your cellphone for 1200 minutes per year (120 mins per month) then you can have 9 Prenuvo scans per year.

We never offer contrast on any of Prenuvo scans. We believe the combination of sequences that we take performs as well as contrast enhanced MRI for tumor detection.

We recommend that you fast for 4 hours before your scan so we can take the clearest images of your stomach and gall bladder.

If you ate something, don't worry. This is not a health issue, it is perfectly safe to still have your scan. Depending on how much you ate, it just means that we will have a slightly more obscured view of your stomach and gallbladder.

No. You can drink whatever you want. Just bear in mind that, depending on the scan you are taking, you will be in the MRI machine for up to 75 mins, so we recommend that you visit the restroom before going in.

There is no need to dress in a particular way for your scan day. You will be given a set of scrubs (top and bottom) to wear during your scan. You can leave on your underwear.

You will be given a locker in the change room to store your belongings while you are being scanned. This locker can be locked with a key that you bring into the scan room during the scan.

Even metal objects not made of iron or steel can interfere with the exam. Never bring any of the following into the examination room: coins, dentures or partial plates, hearing aids, iPod items, jewelry, keys, cell phone, watch. A secure private room to store your valuables will be provided.

The best thing to do is to leave them at home. Jewelry and piercings can be dangerous or interfere with the images we take. If you arrive at the clinic with jewelry or piercings, you will be asked to remove them and store them in your locker.

MRI is a harmless, pain-free procedure. The scanner is air-conditioned, well lit, and you will always be in contact with an MRI technologist through a two-way intercom. The MRI scanner produces thumping and humming noises as it is acquiring the images. We will offer you some headphones or earplugs to reduce the noise. You can also choose to listen to music to help pass the time. We can set a playlist for you, or we can plug in your music, it is up to you! The technologist who operates the scanner will be observing you from the adjacent room throughout the scan. It is important to remain still when images are being acquired.

Our open bore MRI scanner permits more than sixty percent of all scans to be conducted with the head outside of the magnet, which greatly eases the claustrophobic feeling. Your doctor may prescribe you with a sedative depending on your level of claustrophobia. Please arrange the sedative prior to your MRI exam and please also ensure you have arranged a driver or alternate mode of transportation.

We will make you as comfortable as possible for the scan. This should make the need to move minimal. If you do move, this is not a safety issue. It just affects the quality of the images we can obtain. Part of what makes our scan so accurate is that we image the same tissue in your body a number of different times in different directions and at different tissue weightings. If you move it affects our ability to align all these images and therefore affects the accuracy of our reading.

Not really. Of course if it is an emergency we will get you out of there to go to the toilet. But the high accuracy of our Prenuvo scan relies on us imaging the same tissue in your body a number of different ways. If you need to take a break, once you return you will be in another position. If you think this might be a problem you should limit how much you drink or take some medication to ensure you can last the duration of the scan.

You will be provided with squeeze ball at the start of the scan. You can squeeze this at any time to alert the technologist performing your scan.

Usually it takes up to 5-10 business days for a radiologist to read your scans. This is because there are up to 2000 images to get through and check for hundreds of conditions. It is a thorough but time-consuming job. If on our initial read we find something particularly concerning, we will try our best to expedite your reading as quickly as possible.

Not at this time. We are at the cutting edge of revolutionizing whole body screening. While there are many studies showing the effectiveness of whole body MRI, no public facility is conducting these examinations. It might take years, unfortunately, for MSP/healthcare plans to cover preventative MRI scans, especially with the huge backlog of diagnostic scans at this time.

Typically, a Prenuvo scan is not covered by extended insurance. Some customers have had success claiming part of the scan fee with their insurer, but this is not commonplace. We are working with insurers to educate them on the advantages of the Prenuvo scan but it is unlikely that there will be changes in the short term.

Medical expenditures like the Prenuvo scan are typically tax-deductible. For example, it is tax-deductible in British Columbia and you are effectively paying for your Prenuvo scan out of your pre-tax income.

GST is not levied on medical expenditures, including the Prenuvo scan.

Not by Prenuvo. Our only requirement is to send your medical report to your referring doctor. We do not submit the report to any health or insurance system.

Dr. Attariwala, MD, PhD is a dual board certified radiologist and nuclear medicine physician who is certified in both Canada and the United States and he has given numerous presentations at international conferences. He received his formal training at UBC, along with specialized medical training at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Centre (New York), UCLA, and USC. Dr. Attariwala also holds a doctorate in biomedical engineering from Northwestern University (Evanston, IL).

A Radiologist (physician specially trained in MRI and other radiology examinations, such as X-ray, CT, ultrasound and Nuclear Medicine). Radiologists at Prenuvo are Fellows of the “Royal College of Physicians” and “Surgeons of Canada” and are licensed by the “College of Physicians and Surgeons of British Columbia.

The clinic operates under the College of Physicians and Surgeons of BC. Technologists are registered with the CAMRT. The clinic also has to adhere to the Diagnostic Accreditation Program which is run by the College of Physicians.

We aim to return every customer's medical report within 5 business days. Infrequently there are short delays, particularly around the holidays. If we think your report will be delayed we will let you know in advance.

We produce a detailed medical report for your physician that walks them through even system and organ in the body and identifies any abnormal findings we identify. This is produced in a format that they are familiar with.

We aim to make available later this year. You will receive access to your images as well as a patient friendly report which will walk you through everything we screen for. You will be able to read this on our app and on your computer. In the meantime you will receive a USB of your images when you leave the clinic.

We can provide you with some recommendations of specialists who we have worked with in the past. Unfortunately we cannot refer. However, we want to collaborate with any of the medical professionals you have and would be happy to work with your doctor to make sure that you are taken care of.

There are so many differences between a Prenuvo scan and other whole body MRI services that we generally don't make comparisons.

• Sequences and filters used – to make sure that there is a low false positive rate, it is essential to image your body with multiple filters. Most other whole body providers do not use many filters in their screening protocol. In our protocol this is the key to our low false positive rate.
• Quantity and quality of the images — we get up to 1600 high quality images inside your body. The basic rule is that more images provide more details. We capture up to 10x more images than "WB MRI".
• One time scanning — we scan you from head to toe during one 60-75min scan. Other providers scan parts of the body and “glue” the parts together to create whole body scan.
• Price – Our services are less expensive than our competitors.

A false positive in imaging is when a finding is reported to be present when it is not. For example, a test designed to detect cancer returns a positive result when the person does not have cancer. In one of our clinical studies, we had 4 false positive findings out of 1000 patients. There is no perfect test, however we are committed to learning from any false positives that we do have to minimize the likelihood of them recurring in future studies.

It is rare that PET-CT (Positron Emission Tomography - Computed Tomography) is used to screen for cancer. PET-CT is expensive and subjects you to both gamma and x-ray radiation. The PET portion of PET-CT uses gamma radiation to detect the metabolic activity of a tumor. The CT portion obtains many x-ray images which are over-layed on the PET images to assist in determining the exact location of the tumor in the body. PET has limited use in the kidneys, ureters and bladder because the radioactive injection is excreted through the urinary system and is highly concentrated in these areas during the scan. The Prenuvo scan does not have these issues and is therefore more sensitive than PET-CT for tumors of the urinary system.

Bigger is not always better. A 3T MRI is a great option for a detailed brain study. Unfortunately 3T performs poorly for whole body imaging due to wavelength interference (physics!) and imaging artifacts (more physics!). Additionally, a 3T MRI increases the body temperature too much. Therefore, for safety reasons they are used for single body parts. As we specialize in whole body imaging we only use a 1.5T MRI.

Nearly all of us have abnormalities and findings. For example, as a generation of people who spend a lot of time sitting (using computers, cell phones, watching tv) we diagnose some degree of spine degeneration in almost everyone. Many of us have benign findings that are useful to be aware of when we are healthy so that they are not mistaken for something more serious later on. Importantly, less than 5% of customers receive "life-altering" news.

Ultimately, the choice comes down to you. If you have a strong family history of cancer or major disease then a Prenuvo scan at a younger age makes sense. The incidence of cancer goes up with age, starting at approximately 40 years old. However, cancer that develops at a younger age, while less common, tends to be more aggressive. A Prenuvo scan at any age is helpful, especially in establishing a baseline for your health.

A CT scan is great for showing densities in organs, but is not useful for determining what these densities are. For example, the CT can only report a "possible fibroid measuring 10mm", whereas an MRI can show more certainty in saying "a 0.8cm intramural fibroid". The MRI is more definitive on its composition and exact location. The CT can show densities such as coronary artery calcifications, and this is the main benefit from a CT over MRI. The MRI shows more precise imaging for brain, brain arteries (which are not imaged at all on a non-contrast enhanced CT), as well as every organ in the neck, breasts, abdominal and pelvis. CT would be better for assessing esophagus, lung and stomach. The major downside of the CT is that it uses a high dose of radiation. For example a CT scan uses up to 79.7mGy of radiation. This is the equivalent of 800 chest x-rays and 22 years of background radiation every time you go for a CT scan. With MRI, there is no use ionizing radiation, making it a safe test that does not have a risk of causing leukemia or lymphoma.

It difficult to compare ultrasound to MRI. There are a few areas where ultrasound really shines — notably in confirming kidney stones because MRI is less able to see calcification. But it suffers from a poor field of vision (kind of like shining a light in under the water, where the depth of field can be a bit murky) which means that it sometimes misses things. A good example was an ovarian cyst we found recently in a woman that received a normal ultrasound because the cyst was likely confused with a section of bowel. An MRI is a completely different modality. It is three-dimensional so if you see something of interest, you know exactly what organ it is in. And we don't just take run-of-the-mill MRI. We take many different tissue weightings which means we can not only determine that "something is there" but we can distinguish if that something is a hematoma, cyst, abscess or solid tumor.

MRI. A CT scan has a problem differentiating tumors. This is because a CT focuses on density. The density of a tumor is not greatly different to the density of a cyst, but has a vastly different significance. A CT scan can miss many tumors and equally concerning, can more often lead to additional testing when it is unnecessary. Importantly, CT scans cannot accurately assess breast tumor or liver tumors.

We perform a comprehensive set of protocols which image the entire body. These include brain quantification, arterial assessment, fat quantification as well as dedicated cancer and spinal screening. The exact techniques are part of our "special sauce" and are hence not freely given out. Rest assured they are a combination of evidence based and emerging technologies which offer the most comprehensive diagnostic imaging in a reasonable time frame. We currently utilize Siemens hardware in all locations.

We do a very detailed examination of the brain in our Comprehensive Prenuvo scan. We use this in three ways. First, if you have advanced Alzheimer's we will see that damage in your brain. Second, we often see early warning signs of Alzheimer's in the form of tiny white matter lesions in the brain. Third, we use these images as a baseline for your brain volume and then can compare this to your next reading taken when you come in for future scans. Any changes in brain volume will be apparent.

These screens work very well together. Mammography is capable of seeing small micro-calcifications in the breast that MRI does not see. Breast calcifications are well visualized on mammograms. Although breast calcifications are usually noncancerous (benign), certain patterns of calcifications — such as tight clusters with irregular shapes and fine appearances may indicate breast cancer or precancerous changes to breast tissue. Our MRI scan, on the other hand, is capable of seeing breast cancer more clearly through dense breast tissue which mammogram struggles to do.

We don't image the heart in great detail because of the time it takes to do a good cardiac study. A good cardiac study takes around 40 minutes and this would not include images of the coronary arteries.

We can't tell you if you have a blocked artery in the heart, a CT is much better at doing that. So if you are concerned you are experiencing a heart attack, then you should request a CT study (after calling 911). What we are able to do with the Prenuvo scan is look for evidence of atherosclerotic disease, the cause of most heart attacks, in other parts of the body. The most common place we find this is the brain. If we find advanced small vessel ischemia in the brain then there is a high probability of having atherosclerosis in the coronary arteries of the heart.

While unpleasant, a colonoscopy is a very good examination of the colon. It is able to see and remove precancerous polyps before they have the opportunity to develop into cancer. On occasion a colonoscopy may not be able to visualize all the way through the colon. Similarly, the Prenuvo scan may not always see small polyps in the colon as they will be mixed in with stool. We will see colon cancer once it has invaded the colon wall (still Stage 1). So it is worth thinking of the Prenuvo scan as a backup to a colonoscopy, not as a replacement for it.

We are very protective of your information. We strive to be at the forefront of compliance for the security of patient information and adhere to privacy regulations and legislation in the jurisdictions we operate. The confidential information which we store is accessible only by a small number of staff who must have a reason to access the information. Any staff access to patient-identifiable data is logged and stored by the company.

Our patient’s privacy and confidentiality are very important to us. We comply with privacy regulations and legislation in the jurisdictions we operate.

We follow B.C. law which requires us to keep a copy of your images and reports for 25 years.