Future Technology Trends

A gigantic MRI machine is being built in France and is scheduled to become operational by 2014. This powerful device will be able to resolve small areas within the body. Two companies (Siemens plus Irfu) are helping to design this 90-centimeter bore magnetic resonance imaging appliance. It has a rating of 11.7 Tesla and operates at a frequency of 500 megahertz. This work is happening at the Neurospin center at CEA Saclay. The magnet is named Iseult. A dedicated refrigerator (cryostat) and liquid helium will cool the entire thing to a temperature of negative 271 degrees Celsius. The wires carry 400 times more current than conventional copper lines or 1483 Amps. The electricity generates a strong uniform field. The main coil is composed of 170 double pancake shapes. Two active shielding coils are also included to contain the field and prevent it from interacting with outside items. A similar contraption is being introduced in the US, but that one only has a 65-centimeter bore size. The second device has passive shielding. Read More »

Superconducting materials have been employed in a variety of domains. The technology can be used to build appliances that produce giant magnetic fields. Since the currents face no resistance, this feature means that the invention requires less juice to maintain. Scientists from the national high field magnetic laboratory have set a new record. They have constructed a superconducting insert magnet that has a 35.4 Tesla field. To accomplish this milestone, they utilize a strip of a ceramic yttrium-barium-copper-oxide. They nest the YBCO coil within a 31-tesla resistive magnet. This adds an additional 4.4 Tesla to the other device. The hybrid coils have benefits that exceed either one alone. YBCO sustains its special properties above the boiling temperature of nitrogen (77 kelvin). The lab has beaten their past record for this kind of combination. The academics have been pushing the boundaries forward with a number devices. In a previous article, they have said that their power bill is 7 million dollars a year because of the resistive magnets. Any way of lessening that figure is desirable.  Read More »

University of California Berkeley scientists have used a brain-scanning tool to decode and reconstruct dynamic visual experiences as people watched Hollywood movie trailers. This is a step toward mind reading capabilities. The science of neural functioning has been rapidly progressing over the last few decades. Functional magnetic resonance imaging or fMRI has seen many gains in the quality of the scans produced. The fMRI monitors functional changes in cerebral blood flow (rCBF). When rCBF increases, it means that neurons are firing at a greater rate. It can help researchers to understand how the brain processes visual information by examining these alterations. The functioning of the visual cortex is involved in enabling people to see. Various layers of the VC correspond to the decoding of different aspects of sight (motion etc.).   Read More »

A program recently took place to discuss laboratory directed research and development science. The LDRD meeting covered a number of innovations. The main goal is to keep the country competitive in a variety of domains. The meeting is associated with the US’s Los Alamos National Lab. A few of the items are emerging trends that can potentially be disruptive in nature. One technology is an ultra-low field MRI. It only needs micro or MilliTesla strength magnetic fields to image biology. This compares to clinical devices that have a much higher Tesla rating. There is hope that this will power machines that require less superconducting cables to run. The magnets consume a lot of liquid helium to maintain a low temperature. Any way of reducing this would help to lessen expenses. They are combining MRI with magnetoencephalography to obtain the best aspects of each technology. A mixture of the two could boost the temporal and spatial capabilities of scanning neurons (see Probing Brain Dynamics by Ultra-low Field Magnetic Resonance PDF). Read More »

Scientists from the Japanese National Institute for Materials Science have generated an enormous magnetic field at a whopping 24 Tesla using a novel superconducting magnet.  It surpasses their previous attempts.  This is over a hundred thousand times the strength of the earth’s magnetic field.  These ultra-high power magnets can lead to significantly cheaper and more compact resonance imaging devices.  Twenty Tesla MRIs and above are already in use for studying small animals and an 11.7 one is planned for human experiments in the next several years. The highest magnetic pulses have approached 100 T.  These are not sustained and thus impractical for MRI machines as they last only milliseconds.   In general, higher field strengths can mean an increased sensitivity and resolution of the scanning technology.  These sorts of advances could enable biological imaging to become more widespread in the clinic.   Read More »

 By 2013, researchers hope to construct the largest magnetic resonance imaging device for human research.  This mammoth future machine will be much stronger than current MRI’s.  Its rating of 11.7 tesla is over 230,000 times the Earth’s magnetic field.  The current world record holder for scanning technology stands at 9.4 tesla.  Smaller MRI’s rated at 11.7 tesla already exist in research labs, but they are only used to study animals.  The majority of clinical machines in the world are significantly less powerful than that (between 1 to 3 Tesla).  This apparatus has to have a uniform field in a much larger area, so there are many engineering obstacles to overcome before putting it to use.  Once ready, it could lead to clearer images of the inner workings of the human body.   Read More »