Japanese industrial conglomerate Mitsubishi and two Japanese universities said they have developed a prototype of a 3-tesla MR scanner equipped with high-temperature superconducting coils that do not need cooling with helium.
The scanner model is half the size of a full-sized MR scanner. Mitsubishi and partners Kyoto University and Tohoku University said they now plan to produce a full-sized system by 2020 and to bring it to market by 2021.
Mitsubishi said it was able to achieve a 3-tesla magnetic field by increasing the precision of the coil winding. By using laser displacement meters to measure the coil height and then adjusting it with correction sheets, the company was able to produce winding accuracy of 0.1 mm for pancake coils with an outer diameter of about 400 mm. That reaches the level of magnetic field homogeneity required for commercial imaging, Mitsubishi said.
The current small model offers an imaging space that is 25 mm in diameter and a field homogeneity of less than two-millionths, according to the company. Mitsubishi said it used the 3-tesla scanner to image a 25-mm mouse fetus.
