Simulation study of Magnetic Resonance Imaging examination reservation processes for stroke patients

The timely imaging examinations are most important for stroke patients to have the further appropriate diagnosis and treatment. We have proposed a contract-based Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) reservation process in [1] in order to reduce their waiting time for MRI examinations. Contracted time slots (CTS) are especially reserved for stroke patients. Regular time slots (RTS) assignment policy is to assign some “unlucky” patients to RTS by keeping CTS queue length below a certain threshold. We further propose a reservation process in [2] in order to reduce the waiting time of these “unlucky” patients by utilizing the virtual CTS queue. RTS assignment policy is used to reserve additional RTS instead of assigning specific patients directly to RTS. This paper proposes a new reservation process without the virtual CTS queue. All times slots including CTS and RTS are used on FIFO (First In First Out) order. Computational results show that the improved method can greatly reduce the maximal waiting time and the deviation of average waiting time.