What could help calm a claustrophobic person while having an mri?

Hypnosis/Meditation: could help. This would require practice before the actual event. Vividly visualize yourself somewhere wonderfully relaxing and calm, use every sense (vision, taste, smell, etc), tell yourself that any sounds that you hear will only take you deeper into relaxation (there's a lot of knocking in an MRI machine), and allow yourself to drift off. Improve the experience by iamaging your cells healing.