Company Announces Successful Scan Using Novel 3T MRI Scanner

A leading manufacturer of electrical and electronic products, and systems, and two Japanese universities have successfully imaged a mouse fetus using a small model of a new 3T Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scanner that uses high-temperature superconducting coils.

Most MRI scanners in use today have magnets that are cooled by liquid helium, a gas that is becoming increasingly scarce. The new technology uses high-temperature superconducting coils that do not require cooling. The company expects to develop a half-size MRI scanner by 2020, and to be able to commercialize a full-size scanner within five years, in 2021.

Mitsubishi Electric (Tokyo, Japan), Kyoto University and Tohoku University, successfully developed the 3T magnetic field by increasing the precision of the coil winding. The company used laser displacement meters to measure the coil height and then adjusted it with correction sheets. The researchers succeeded in developing a pancake coil with a winding accuracy of 0.1 mm and an outer diameter of approximately 400 mm, and were able to achieve sufficient magnetic field homogeneity for use in commercial imaging. The model scanner has an imaging space with a diameter of 25 mm – the same level as that in a 230-mm diameter and 650-mm cylinder commercial-sized MRI scanner. Mitsubishi Electric used the 3T scanner model to successfully image a 25-millimeter mouse fetus.

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