11.7T in Korea in superconductor science & technology journal

Well, so it was published, finally, last month (SUST article, Feb 2025). A few facts according to the paper: The magnet warm bore is 70 cm in diameter, the magnet runs in persistent mode and has been stable in the last 2+ years. In comparison with the Iseult magnet in France, passive shielding (requiring massive shielding walls) and persistent mode (as opposed to driven mode) appear to be the main differences in addition to the magnet bore size (90 cm for Iseult). I could not find gradient coil specification, but from my visit to Gachon a few years ago, the coil's small thickness is unlikely to allow windings with high gradient amplitudes. The paper included a 3D gradient-echo image of an ex-vivo monkey brain with 12.8 cm FOV and 0.5 mm isotropic resolution. This shows the imaging system is operational but the authors certainly would want more images to meet the magnet's high expectation. So, congratulations to the team, and let's hope more is coming.

Compact 3T service visit to Mayo Clinic

February 2025 marks the 9th anniversary of the delivery of Compact 3T scanner to Mayo Clinic. This year, the week of February 17th was a frigid one, not best for air travel, but a service visit to Rochester, Minnesota was made to replace and renew the magnet's cooling system. Thanks to the hard work of the GE HealthCare colleagues and help from the Mayo Clinic support team, the week's task was completed in time. The work will continue until the end of March, with more service visits to ramp the magnet and calibrate the scanner. Hopefully the refreshed 3T system, still the world's only high-performance compact 3T MRI scanner for humans, will serve the research community for many years to come. 

ISMRM 2025 Abstract Announcement

In my counting, 35 x 151 + 23 = 5308 abstracts are accepted, of which 851 (16%) are oral, and 549 are power pitches. Two submissions of mine were both accepted as an oral presentation, which is not a common event based on the probability (0.16^2 = 2.6%). In addition, Lydia's implanted lead heating work, from Mayo Clinic and where I am the second author, was also accepted as an oral. So apparently you don't have to do low-field or machine learning to get invited to speak in the conference. Now whether I will actually fly to the conference and present in person is another question. I wish remote presentation option was still available after the pandemic.