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.

MRI Workshop in Pusan

Many KSMRM members gathered in Pusan in the past weekend (Fri-Sat) for an MRI technology workshop, in which 12 MR scientists (PhDs) presented reviews of various MR technologies in current use. The workshop had significant emphasis on education; many students attended for  lectures covering plenty of basic principles rather than just latest results. Dr. Lee presented his research on compact 3T MRI scanner from his time at GE. From the lab, Seulki and Seon-ha also attended. The workshop was well organized, and the all-Korean presentations were well-received and helpful to both beginners and experts in MRI. It was suggested that similar meetings be held more regularly, e.g. every two years.

Siemens Reference Site Symposium

As part of the on-going and expanding collaboration between CNIR and Siemens, last Friday in N Center there was a symposium on fast neuroimaging with a special guest lecture by Kawin Setsompop. Four Siemens representatives accompanied Kawin, and Director Kim hosted the guest from the morning hours to lunch. The Lecture was well attended and was presented with much information and clarity. A few interesting points were: "death of 2D", by which the speaker suggested that in neuroimaging fast 3D scans almost beat 2D scans in every aspect; the notion that simultaneous multi-slice imaging can be viewed as a kind of 3D imaging; and an indication that work is being underway or in contemplation to realize SMS without a multi-channel receiver array, which will be relevant for small animal imaging.

Kawin, originally from Thailand, is married to a Korean wife. After the N Center symposium, he went to Seoul for another lecture aimed at clinicians, and was about to continue his trip to go to China for a MRI research meeting. There is much indication that China is expanding facilities and research in MRI in recent years.

Summer internship program concludes.

The second Summer Internship Program of the Center was completed last week with a Friday lunch-time poster presentation and picture taking. See here for the 11 posters presented. The program, aimed at  promoting the research opportunities at the Center and recruiting future graduate students, went well as a whole. It was proposed that next year, the internship program be open to BME professors not participating in IBS as well, which may help attract more engineering-oriented students. This year about 1/3 of the participating students decided to stay for 4 more weeks to continue their lab activities. Their research interests are primarily in neuroscience.

IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Conference

An annual international conference, IEEE-EMBC, is being held in Je-ju island. The conference is from Tuesday 7/11 to Saturday 7/15. Among many parallel sessions, a few that were related to the Lab were held on Thursday.

There were a series of sessions on Computational Human Models. This is probably one of the very active areas where government, industry, and academic institutes are closely collaborating. New players appear to continue to enter the field (FDA developing MIDA, Novocure, NICT from Japan, NEVA Electromagnetics, and a Hanyang University team working with ICRP), and new applications are emerging as computational power grows as does interest in non-invasive electromagnetic treatment of patients. In this conference, Novocure highlighted what they named Tumor-Treating Fields (TTFields) which can benefit from bio-electromagnetic modeling.

One session on MREPT took place with four invited speakers. In general, despite some new ideas, in this conference no new methods/concepts capable of human clinical application were presented.

Summer internship started.

2017 Summer Internship program kicked off on Monday. A total of 18 students from outside the GBME department of SKKU are participating. Today was the first full day of the program, which started with Prof. Jang JB's lecture on his biomaterials research. At 11 AM, Dr. Sungman Moon from GEHC (USA) visited for an informal seminar on MR gradient coils, which was attended by several intern students as well as GBME graduate students. In an emphatic lecture, Dr. Moon gave a very good introduction of industrial medical imaging engineering research. Students were attentive and engaged.

This was the second time for a GEHC MR team member to give a seminar at the Center this month. Last Tuesday, Dr. Yang, Yoon Jeong from GEHC in Cleveland, OH (USA) visited CNIR (with her husband and two girls!) for a seminar on RF coil technology. The method itself had a slick name, Adaptive Imaging RF (AIR) technology. Both seminars well portrayed the latest MR engineering innovation led by GE.