High Field MRI Center

High Field Magnetic Resonance Imaging Center

The High Field Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) Center is available to all investigators interested in utilizing the following systems:

3 Tesla Siemens Skyra

In early 2011, the Magnetom 3 Tesla Skyra MRI system arrived at the SFVAMC and is located within the Research MRI Suite in the basement of Building 203. The Skyra comes equipped with an actively-shielded 70cm bore magnet, an actively-shielded water-cooled gradient system, providing 45mT/m gradients with a slew rate of 200T/m/s, a digital RF transmit and a 64 channels receive system. The Skyra system includes packages for diffusion tensor imaging, 2D arterial spin labeling perfusion imaging, susceptibility-weighted imaging, BOLD rsfMRI, single voxel spectroscopy, 2D and 3D chemical shift imaging, and multinuclear spectroscopy. The system also comes with the following receiver coils:

  • Multi-element Body Matrix
  • 32 Channel Spin Matrix
  • 20 Channel Head/Neck
  • 32 Channel Head
  • 36 Channel Peripheral Angio
  • 4 Channel Large Flex
  • 4 Channel Small Flex
  • 16 Channel Hand/Wrist
  • 16 Channel Shoulder – Large
  • 16 Channel Should – Small
  • 15 Channel Transmit/Receive Knee (QED)

In addition to the current standard imaging protocols, CIND is collaborating with the University of Freiburg, Germany to utilize an optical motion tracking and correction package for brain MRI.  Prospective motion correction is now routinely available for high-resolution MPRAGE and TSE. The optical motion tracking device can further  be used with the auxiliary equipment for fMRI.  Also, the 3T system is capable of simultaneous EEG recording and MR imaging as well as task-based stimuli presentation for fMRI.

 

7 Tesla Siemens Magnetom

 

The 7T Magnetom arrived in late 2013 and is available for research investigations. This ultra-high field MRI system, located in the Research MRI Suite, is equipped with a state-of-the-art actively-shielded whole body magnet with 60cm bore size, an actively-shielded water-cooled gradient system, providing up to 70mT/m gradients per axis with a maximum slew rate of 200 T/m/s.

The system also includes a single channel transmit Nova Medical 32 channel receive head coil as well as a RF power amplifier providing up to 8 kW power. In addition, the 7T system includes a multinuclear MR package, as well as neurosoftware imaging packages and IDEA/ICE research development tools for sequence development.