UK Company makes double breakthrough with MRI scanner

UK-based MR Solutions has announced two major breakthroughs that could bring bench-top 3 Tesla MRI scanners into more pre-clinical research laboratories.

The scanners have been developed using super-conducting magnets which eliminate the need for liquid helium cooling; and secondly the scanner’s stray magnetic field has been cut so that other laboratory equipment can be safely operated within centimetres of the unit.

“These breakthroughs have two significant benefits,” says MR Solutions Chief Executive Dr David Taylor. “Firstly, the cost is dramatically reduced by doing away with the liquid helium cooling and attendant safety devices. Secondly, the space required for the system is only the size of a desk.”

MR Solutions, based in Guildford in the south east of England, is already a major player in the rapidly growing Chinese market and is gaining increasing recognition in Europe and the US.

“We are sure that our new bench-top MRIs will be welcomed with open arms by labs which are always constrained by budgets and lack of space” adds Dr Taylor.

The company has 25 years of experience in developing scanners for research and academia and also develops MRI systems and sub systems to individual customer specifications.

With offices in the US and Hong Kong. It has a workforce of more than twenty people, many of whom are physicists, programmers and engineers and works closely with universities involved in preclinical research in Europe, Asia and the US.