Radiology Equipment Available for Research Exams

The following radiology imaging equipment is available for use in research studies

• UH: University Hospital
• Ellis: Ellis Fischel Cancer Center
• WH: Women’s Hospital
• SPMB: South Providence Medical Building

MRI

7T MRI (Terra, Siemens Healthineers): The 7T Terra is a 60cm bore FDA approved system equipped with XR Connectome level gradients up to 80mT/m and 200T/m/s slew rates on each axis. The system is switchable between single (8kW peak) and 8 channel parallel transmit (8x2kW) modes and has available the Nova 1H 1x32, 8x32 head coils and the research mode multi-nuclear option enabling 13C, 23Na, 31P, 19F, 7Li, 17O and 129Xe. Also, available for research use are several decoupled transceiver arrays (1H 8x2, 8x1, 16x1, and 31P/1H dual transceiver 8x1, Resonance Research Inc.) for head studies. On the Siemens system, passive and active shimming are implemented with 1st and 2nd order shims, in addition to four 3rd order shims. Standard physiological monitoring enables ECG, pulse, respiratory monitoring with triggering enabled user controls. The system is equipped with a fMRI paradigm presentation system for functional studies. Inline technology available on the console permits common post- processing steps prior image viewing. Important acquisition features include IPAT mSENSE and GRAPPA for image acceleration and reduced artifact, SWI, and simultaneous multi-slice acceleration. The image reconstruction system is a high-performance processor with 2x Intel Processor 16-core CPU 2.3GHz, 256 GB RAM and 200GB SSD hard drive; >2.5TB for raw data storage. The host computer features 1x Intel Xeon Processor with Quad Core 3.5GHz 32GB RAM, 300GB hard drive x 2 for system and image database.

Also available to support MRSI and EPI imaging at the NGIF is a very high order shim insert VHOS-380-18S (Resonance Research Inc.) equipped with all 3rd, eight 4th and two 5th order terms. The system is powered by a 50 channel MXD power supply at 5A/channel.

For patient comfort and communication, the 7T Terra is equipped with an Avotec Silent Vision Model SV-6060 HD Projection system and Silent Scan® Model SS-3300 Research Audio System. The latter provides in-bore patient communication and audio system with low profile headphone speakers compatible with the limited space with 7T transmit receive coils.

To facilitate real-time and near real-time testing and optimization, the7T Terra system is linked with a Windows 10 PC (i7 8 core, 16mB cache 2.9-4.8GHz, 32GB RAM DDR4, 1TB disk; 512GB SSD, GPU Nvidia Geforce GTX 1660 6GB) and the secure hospital network operating at 1000Mbps.

3T MRI (Vida, Siemens Healthineers): 3T Vida is a 70cm bore magnet equipped with the XT gradient coil operating at 60mT/m and 200mT/m/s amplitude and slew rate on each axis. The system uses the BioMatrix design to manage a large dynamic range of patient anatomy and physiology. This 64 channel system is equipped with head and neck arrays and a variety of standard RF coils for imaging the spin and body. With a goal for fast body imaging for patients with cardiopulmonary pathology, cine cardiac and liver imaging is enabled with compressed sensing as well as SMS imaging. The multi-nuclear option is available for 3He, 7Li, 13C, 17O, 19F, 23Na, 31P, and 129Xe.

PET/CT

PET/CT (Biograph Vision, Siemens Healthineers): The PET/CT is a Siemens Biograph Vision scanner with the following features. High speed CT is capable of  ≥ 64 slices and uses FlowMotion technology to reduce unnecessary CT exposure. The 3D PET Uptiso UDR detectors enable high spatial and temporal resolution (3.2 mm crystals for fast time of flight), high sensitivity (100 cps/kBq3), and perfect registration between CT an PET fields of view (zero differential deflection patient bed). The scanner uses QualityGuard for daily and weekly quality control. The platform is equipped with Multiparametric PET AI software for routine parametric imaging and to ensure reproducibility. The gantry has a 78 cm bore, 126 cm tunnel length ant 227 kg table capacity. The CT specifications are 80-100 kW generator power, 0.33, 0.305 and 0.285 s rotation times, 10-140 kV tube voltages, 26 or 128 slices, SAFIRE5 iterative reconstruction and iMAR5 metal artifact reduction. Additional PET specifications are 26.3 cm field of view, 3.2x3.2x20 mm crystal size, 100% SiPM coverage of crystal array, 1870 kcps effective NEC, and 214 ps time of flight performance.