Police said the man was dragged into the medical machine by his 'large metal chain' after reportedly defying orders to stay out of the room.
The Nassau County Police Department said the man walked into the MRI room at the Nassau County Open MRI while a scan was in progress and was pulled into the machine.
The as yet unidentified victim suffered serious injuries in what police described as a medical episode.
Officials have said the man was not a patient and was there with someone else at the time.
One witness told CBS News he had defied orders to stay out of the room after he heard his relative screaming from inside and got concerned.
An investigation is ongoing into the circumstances, but police have said there is no criminality involved and it appears to have been an accident.
An official cause of death has yet to be released in the incident, but one staff doctor at North Shore University Hospital speculated on a potential cause.
Dr Payal Sud told CBS: 'If this was a chain that was wrapped around the neck, I could imagine any kind of strangulation injuries that could happen. Asphyxiation, cervical spine injuries.'
When undergoing an MRI procedure, patients are generally asked to remove all jewelry and piercings to remain safe.
The machine generates strong magnetic fields and radio waves to create detailed internal images of the human body.
The magnetic pull is so strong that it is capable of throwing a wheelchair across a room, according to the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering.
When undergoing an MRI procedure, patients are generally asked to remove all jewelry and piercings to remain safe.
Injuries and deaths from MRI machines, while rare, have happened in the past.
In 2001, a six-year-old boy was killed at Westchester Medical Center in New York when an metal oxygen tank was pulled into the machine while he was being scanned.
And in 2018 a man died in India when he entered an MRI room holding an oxygen tank.
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