Helium-free MRI is on the rise, spurred by high helium cost as well as general awareness of resource conservation needs around the globe. GE had a very early technical lead on this front, but it is only very recent that it is devoting full efforts to commercialization of the technology for mainstream MRI scanners. In this week's ISMRM meeting, "Freelium" 1.5 T scanners were announced (again) as products-to-be of GE HealthCare. For research, a low-helium highlight was GE's Compact 7T scanner, presented by Tom Foo in a scientific oral session, as an Annual Meeting Program Committee-selected talk.
Combining high-field (7T), strong & fast gradients, and compact geometry is technically very difficult for even conventional liquid helium-filled magnets. Doing this on a helium-free system is almost insane because of the difficulty in magnet heating control. Making human 7T compact is therefore a very high-risk proposal.
The world's first such system was announced in the talk with impressive 7T brain images, achieved with minimal tailored hardware or processing for image quality. The technology might meaningfully change the 7T research landscape in the upcoming decade.
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