Weight-lifter killed after being sucked into MRI machine
Keith McAllister, 61, entered a medical room at the Nassau Open MRI clinic as his wife received a scan of her knee.
The machine's strong magnetic force pulled him in by the 9kg metal weight training chain around his neck, Nassau County police said.
Adrienne Jones-McAllister, his wife, said she had called out her husband's name to get him to help her off the table.
She told News 12 Long Island.'I yelled out Keith's name, [shouting] Keith, come help me up.
'I saw the machine snatch him around and pull him into the machine. He died, he lost, he went limp in my arms.'
She said her husband had suffered a series of heart attacks after he was freed from the MRI machine before being pronounced dead.
Mrs Jones-McAllister said it was not the first time the couple had visited Nassau Open MRI on Long Island, US.
She said: 'That was not the first time that guy has seen that chain. They had a conversation about it before.'
McAllister was taken to hospital with critical injuries after the incident but died the next day.
Police said the accident, which occurred on Wednesday, 'resulted in a medical episode' after an 'unauthorised' entrance into the medical examination.
The magnetic fields of an MRI machine exert 'very powerful forces' on objects made of iron, some steels and other magnetic materials, according to the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering.
The forces are so strong that they could fling a wheelchair across the room.
MRI accidents are rare but can be fatal.
New York's Department of Health said it was reviewing the incident.
A spokesman said: 'MRI facilities in NY are not regulated as part of diagnostic and treatment centres, so are therefore not subject to routine inspections.'
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