It's official: human 7T

This week it was made official that the Center is going to purchase a human 7T scanner from Siemens. The system, known as Terra, has recently been approved for clinical use in Europe. The clinical use as approved will be limited to a single transmit RF chain, which is problematic for body imaging, which in turn indicates that Siemens is envisioning marketing 7T for neuro applications primarily. The Center's human 7T research is finally taking off. The delivery is expected by September 2018.  That will be a 3rd 7T installation in Korea, following NRI (Gachon Univ., 2005) and KBSI (2015, also see here).

New space for MR physics and systems research

The north building of the N center has many empty rooms set aside for future expansion of the campus's research facilities. In early September it was decided that the rooms on the 3rd floor would be given to the CNIR and GBME for office and laboratory use. This is a boost to the MR research labs since the MR methodology research activities have been slow compared to neuroscience ones lately at CNIR.
The three human MRI research labs will each occupy one of the newly allocated rooms, facing north, and Dr. Lee's research will now expand more into the experimental projects, utilizing the new space. The lab will be called MR physics and systems laboratory, for both hardware and software research addressing broad subjects on human MRI systems.