Because of the lack of harmful effects on the patient and the operator, MR is well suited for "interventional radiology", where the images produced by an MRI scanner are used to guide a minimally-invasive procedure intraoperatively and/or interactively.

iMRI systems are often used for doing biopsies of lesions, resections of tumors, guiding thermal ablation of tissue, as well as other procedures.

It is commonly used in neurosurgery, where every millimeter of tissue spared in surgery can make a difference for patient recovery.

For example, use of non-magnetic (e.g. Titanium) surgical instruments and MR compatible patient surveillance accessories in addition to the MRI scanner itself increase the cost of IMRI.

Such open bore magnets are often lower field magnets, typically in the 0.2 tesla range, which decreases their sensitivity and temporal efficiency but also decreases the radio frequency power potentially absorbed by the patient during a protracted operation.