Design and implementation of a low-cost, tabletop MRI scanner for education and research prototyping.
While access to a laboratory MRI system is ideal for teaching MR physics as well as many aspects of signal processing, providing multiple MRI scanners can be prohibitively expensive for educational settings. To address this need, we developed a small, low-cost, open-interface tabletop MRI scanner for academic use. We constructed and tested 20 of these scanners for parallel use by teams of 2-3 students in a teaching laboratory. With simplification and down-scaling to a 1 cm FOV, fully-functional scanners were achieved within a budget of $10,000 USD each. The design was successful for teaching MR principles and basic signal processing skills and serves as an accessible testbed for more advanced MR research projects. Customizable GUIs, pulse sequences, and reconstruction code accessible to the students facilitated tailoring the scanner to the needs of laboratory exercise. The scanners have been used by >800 students in 6 different courses and all designs, schematics, sequences, GUIs, and reconstruction code is open-source.
['Cooley|Clarissa Zimmerman|CZ|', 'Stockmann|Jason P|JP|', 'Witzel|Thomas|T|', 'LaPierre|Cris|C|', 'Mareyam|Azma|A|', 'Jia|Feng|F|', 'Zaitsev|Maxim|M|', 'Wenhui|Yang|Y|', 'Zheng|Wang|W|', 'Stang|Pascal|P|', 'Scott|Greig|G|', 'Adalsteinsson|Elfar|E|', 'White|Jacob K|JK|', 'Wald|Lawrence L|LL|']
D003952:Diagnostic Imaging D004574:Electromagnetic Fields D004867:Equipment Design D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging D019047:Phantoms, Imaging D012106:Research D012815:Signal Processing, Computer-Assisted D013334:Students D013663:Teaching
Low-cost MRI Educational Portable