High-performance Magnets for Looking Inside the Body
Most Powerful Magnetic Resonance Tomograph for Research
2008-Jul-01
Scientists are hoping that two new magnetic resonance tomographs from Siemens will enable them to make new advances in the understanding and treatment of cancer or brain diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. This summer, a scanner will be installed at the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg with a magnetic field strength of 7 Tesla – a world record in cancer research. An even more powerful magnetic field strength of 9.4 Tesla – almost 200,000 times the strength of the earth’s magnetic field – will be generated by a magnetic resonance tomograph set to become operational at the German Forschungszentrum Jülich in 2009. This will also be a world record. Unique: the system also contains a positron emission tomography scanner which provides detailed images of metabolic processes in the brain.
Whereas 1.5 or 3 Tesla MRI scanners have, until now, only been able to visualize structures in the body greater than one millimeter, the new scanner shows details far smaller than one millimeter. The decidedly greater field strength also considerably reduces the scanning time. This means, for example, that the metabolism in tumors or in the brain can be observed directly for the first time. Even the behavior of individual cells in living organisms can be tracked. (PN 2008.16)
