MRI Facilities & Equipment
All MRI facilities and equipment are located on the first floor of the McDermott Clinical Sciences Building.
The MRI Division has two sections:
There are several MRI-compatible devices for delivering stimuli and recording responses.
Human MRI/MRS Section
The Human MRI/MRS Section supports two large-bore MRI/MRS systems. On both Siemens MRI systems, image data is automatically sent to the RII image archival system maintained by BIAD. In addition, the UTHSCSA has a research agreement with Siemens Medical Systems, which supports the development of new MRI methods and applications, taking advantage of proprietary technologies, under a standard confidentiality and intellectual property sharing agreement.
TIM1
A Siemens TIM TRIO 3T whole-body MRI (1H only) system. This large bore system is the primary MRI scanner used for human studies and has a dedicated operator, Feng Gao, MD radiologist from China. The 3T scanner is used for imaging has packages installed for fast field echo, fast spin echo, echo-planar imaging, magnetic resonance angiography, functional BOLD imaging, diffusion-based imaging, perfusion imaging, cardiac imaging (including quantitative cardiac flow), quantitative relaxation time measurements and hydrogen-1MR spectroscopy. Based on a clear bore > 60 cm diameter 3T superconducting magnet with baseline homogeneity 1 ppm at 50 cm DSV, the maximum gradient field strength is > 45 mT/m with a 200 mT/m/ms slew rate. The RF amplifier maximum power is > 35 kW and the system has 19 independent RF receiver channels. There is a large complement of RF coils for a variety of imaging projects including a 60 cm quadrature body coil with decoupling. The system has a large variety of radiofrequency (RF) coils including a 12-channel head coil, a quadrature head coil, a flexible RF coil interface, a small phase-array flex coil, 2 x 12-channel anterior body matrix coils, a 16-element spine phased-array coil, and two single loop receive-only surface coils with diameters of 11 cm and 7 cm. The minimum FOV < 0.5 cm and the maximum FOV = 50 cm.
TIM2
A Siemens TIM TRIO 3T whole-body MRI (1H and X-nuclide). This large bore system is the primary MRI scanner used for NHP and multi-nuclear spectroscopy studies and has a dedicated operator, Jinqi Li, MD. The 3 T scanner is used for imaging baboons and macaques and can be adapted to scan smaller animal models, such as marmosets. Except for the addition of multi-nuclear spectroscopy and the elimination of quantitative cardiac flow, this system has the same scanning packages and features installed as the TIM1 scanner. The system also has an AC88 high performance gradient insert that can be used for very high-resolution studies. All of the RF coils on TIM1 are available with a variety of specialized RF coils including a 7cm small animal head coil, a dual-tuned 31P-1H transmit- receive surface coil, a quadrature knee coil and an 8-channel knee coil.
Animal MRI/MRS Section
The Animal MRI/ MRS Section supports three small-bore MRI/MRS systems.
Bruker Biospec 7T MRI scanner
The 7T Biospec scanner has standard, functional brain imaging and diffusion MR imaging capabilities. This is a small animal MRI/MRS scanner 30 cm (1H and X-nuclide) with three gradient inserts: 15G/cm with 16 cm ID, 40G/cm with 12 cm ID and 150G/cm with 6 cm ID. This system is primarily utilized for imaging brain function in rodents, but is large enough for studying marmosets, macaque and very young baboon subjects. This system may be useful for scaling up physiological brain studies from current rat protocols or the implementation of multi- nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy studies (MRS) with high SNR and spectral resolution.
Bruker Biospec 11.7T MRI
The 11.7T Biospec scanner has a horizontal 155 mm bore (90 mm clear bore) that is 150 cm long, has 740 mT/m (74 G/cm) gradients with 6000 T/m/s slew rate. This system primarily has been used for imaging brain function and brain spectroscopy on mice and other animals of similar size.
Bruker Pharmscan 7T MRI
The Pharmscan 7T is a small MRI animal scanner with a 16cm bore (1H imaging only) and 37 G/cm gradient insert with 6 cm ID. This system primarily has been used for metabolic imaging in rodents, accommodating both mice and rats, but can also be used for studying marmosets, macaque and very young baboon subjects.
Performance
Ancillary equipment in the magnet rooms includes MRI compatible animal-monitoring devices such as an In-Vivo Process patient monitor (for measuring O2, CO2, heart rate and blood pressures), two drug infusion pumps, one portable bag holder and a Medrad programmable dual injection system for Gd contrast agent studies. There is also an MRI-compatible Datex-Ohmeda Aestiva/S anesthesia system. Oxygen gas enters the room through a dedicated in-wall line. Other gases are routed through an RF filtered conduit from the MRI equipment room. There is also a stand-alone In-Vivo pulse oximeter and an assortment of over 20 MRI phantoms for testing image quality.