Revolutionizing bulky Magnetic Resonance Imaging systems, known as MRIs, by making them more mobile, lighter, and less costly is in the cross hairs in GE’s labs. The National Institutes of Health just awarded the team at GE Global Research, which is the company’s technology development arm, a grant for nearly $3.3 million to develop smaller magnets for the critical scanners. As Minfeng Xu, an electrical engineer in GE’s Electromagnets and Superconductivity Lab, writes in his blog today: “Imagine a lighter and smaller MRI system in an ambulance that can be dispatched for emergency care. Imagine a slim MRI system, like the one shown in the figure below, installed in your doctor’s office that can be used for a quick scan when you need it. We are working toward it.”
Big things in small packages: The magnet that GE researchers are developing will be smaller and will require less wire to support an MRI scanner. The reduction in wire would also help reduce the overall cost of an MRI system. “The whole idea is to create a more highly mobile, less costly MRI system platform that delivers the same high resolution and quality of imaging for patients,” said GE’s Kathleen Amm, Lab manager, Electromagnetics and Superconductivity.
In magnetic resonance imaging, the magnet is the key part of the system that enables detailed images that differentiate various soft tissues inside the body, such as in the brain and the cardiovascular system. To obtain images with such high resolution and quality, the magnet must be kept at super cool temperatures of -269 degrees Celsius — which is only a few degrees above absolute zero and as cold as outer space.
Cryogenic liquids, or liquids at ultra-low temperatures, are used today to keep it cool — but cryogenic liquids require special venting and other room specifications, which make the MRI systems more expensive and difficult to install. As a result, many parts of the world still do not have access to this potentially life-saving technology.
