Developed over a ten year period, patients in Scotland are the first humans in the world to experience FFC-MRI
Orange County, CA - December 4th 2017 - Developers at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland have invented a powerful MRI scanner dubbed as ‘100 MRIs in one’. Developed over a ten year period, patients in Scotland are the first humans in the world to experience the Fast Field Cycling magnetic resonance imaging equipment (FFC-MRI). The new scanner is to extract more information than the traditional MRI by switching the strength of the scanner’s magnetic field while performing the MRI procedure.
In the initial trials, the first patients scanned by the FFC-MRI were all previous stroke victims. The developers aimed to extract information that could help explain the onset of a stroke. One of the first patients in the study, 81-year-old Richard Johnson, said, "This is a very exciting project. I am full of admiration for the development and construction of this sophisticated machine, and the aims behind it. I wouldn't have missed this interesting session for the world.” Conventional scanners operate at a fixed magnetic field strength, with power of 1.5 or 3 T. These machines are still used in the 21st century and are fantastic tools for diagnosis and inspection. However, the new FFC-MRI houses special scanners do not have a fixed magnetic field. Under the control of Aberdeen developers, the magnetic field can be switched up and down at a rapid pace. “It’s almost like having a scanner that operates at a thousand magnetic fields rather than just one magnetic field,” said Professor David Lurie, a biomedical physicist with the University of Aberdeen. “In doing so, we can measure the biomarkers of disease. That’s the new thing that we can measure that cannot be [done] by standard MRI machines.” In his interview with the University of Aberdeen, Professor Lurie referenced the serious medical condition called Deep Vein Thrombosis, where blood clots loosen and lodge elsewhere in the body. Standard MRI machines cannot produce the necessary information to combat this disease, but Professor Lurie said “we believe, through experiments we’ve done on test tube samples, that FFC-MRI may be able to get a handle on that information.”
The university is proud to further MRI technology. In the University of Aberdeen interview, Professor Lurie explained that the university’s involvement with MRI technology spans several decades. “Aberdeen has been involved in MRI since the 1970’s, really since the technique began. The world’s first clinically used MRI scan was done here at Aberdeen University in 1980.” The FFC-MRI project is generating the technology to make the new scanner an instrumental tool for basic biomedical research, from clinical research to diagnosis.
