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First Image Taken With an Ultra Low Field MRI

Posted by kdawson on from the swimming-with-the-squids dept.

KentuckyFC writes "MRI machines are about to get smaller, much smaller. Most of their bulk is taken up by the huge superconducting magnets required to generate fields of a few Teslas. Now a team at the Los Alamos National Lab in New Mexico has built a machine that can produce images using a field of only a few microTesla (PDF, abstract here). So giant superconducting magnets aren't necessary, a development that has the potential to make MRI machines much smaller, perhaps even suitcase-sized. The one-page paper shows sections of the first 3D brain image taken with the device."

2 of 189 comments (clear)

  1. MRI accidents by l00sr · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Hopefully this will also put an end to those pesky MRI accidents. Not that they're common, but still, those things aren't toys.

  2. I hope they do away with the tunnels by pair-a-noyd · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I had to have several MRI & CT scans and that friggin tunnel is more than I can handle.
    They tried to put me in one with the normal little tunnel (about as big around as a five gallon bucket) and I freaked out before I got 2' into it and made them back me out. Then they put me in an "open" MRI machine but it was like being crushed under a car. No way Jose. Abort #2.
    So I went to another city where they had a different kind that was a little more "open" than #2.
    This one then pumped me full of Xanax and I survived it.

    The CT scan was not quite as bad because it was like a large doughnut and there was only about 1' of my body inside it but it still freaked me out.
    Xanax on that one too.

    I swore I'll die before I ever go in one of those damn things ever again.
    They need to come up with a better way. Some people can't handle that crap.
    I hope these new ones are a break away from the "trapped in a pipe" or "crushed under a car" machines.