Scientists have developed the world's most powerful MRI scanner - strong enough to lift a 60 metric tonne battle tank.
The MRI scanner equipped with a superconducting magnet will offer unprecedented images of the human brain when it is fully developed next year, builders claim.
The imager's superconducting electromagnet is designed to produce a field of 11.75 Teslas, making it the world's most powerful whole-body scanner. Most standard hospital MRIs produce 1.5 or 3 Teslas, IEEE Spectrum reported. The previous record for field strength was around 9.4 Teslas.
The development of the scanner, known as Imaging of Neuro disease Using high-field MR And Contrastophores (INUMAC), has been in progress since 2006 and is expected to cost about USD 270 million. Standard hospital scanners have a spatial resolution of about one millimetre, covering about 10,000 neurons, and a time resolution of about a second.
The INUMAC will be able to image an area of about 0.1 mm, or 1000 neurons, and see changes occurring as fast as one-tenth of a second, according to Pierre Vedrine, director of the project at the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission, in Paris. The wire in the INUMAC magnet is made from niobium-titanium, a common superconductor alloy.
To reach the required field strength, the electromagnet must be able to carry 1500 amperes at 12 Teslas and be cooled by super-fluid liquid helium to 1.8 kelvins.
The inner diameter of the magnet will be 90 centimetres, wide enough for a human body. The fully assembled magnet will be delivered by September next year, Vedrine said.