The workshop was held in a small auditorium/lecture room from Oct 12-14, with remote listen-in allowed for paid registrants. Remote attendance option in many such occasions is a notable positive change since the pandemic. The morning session of the second day covered MRI systems engineering, providing opportunity to hear about latest development or lack thereof from a few well-known speakers. My summary from the first 4 talks of the session is:
1. The French 11.74T system has identified resistive 3rd order shim coils coupling to the gradient coils as the primary source of image artifacts. They also found that other UHF MRI systems employing the same (Siemens SC72) gradient coil exhibited similar behavior. I am sure this will spur much discussion on the coupling issues, potentially exacerbated by vibration, between various non-RF coils in MRI.
2. Baby MRI researcher at 7T reported successful use of MR-based electrical properties tomography to estimate permittivity of infant brains.
3. Siemens's most powerful head-only gradient coils were apparently designed in Massachusetts General Hospital. The presenter incorrectly said that BEM is the industry standard method of gradient coil design. He also repeated what I think is a misleading statement that their design reduced PNS - peripheral nerve stimulation - in 4 out of 5 scan positions tested. The statement gives an impression that the 5 positions were selected randomly, while I believe they selected lowest-risk ones.
4. Brian Rutt continues to work with Minnesota team to provide a head-only gradient coil to fit inside a whole-body gradient coil that is in Minnesota's 10.5T scanner. He covered a broad range of topics including Comsol-based MGI simulation. He talked about an ultimate head gradient coil (reducing both PNS and MGI) as a work-in-progress.
The first day's schedule included Prof. Jang-Yeon Park's DIANA talk. I missed that one, but hope that the DIANA work will overcome a flurry of ego-driven criticisms (particularly instigated by one sore, petty old man) and be known for its true potential.
PS. The Workshop organizers kindly made recordings of presentations and Q&A available on-line until Nov. 9th. In the recording, Peter Bandettini was not being objective - he was politely but clearly siding with the petty man. It wasn't like him when he said "how can a higher-field be worse?", and when he repeatedly said a real signal will ALWAYS show up as number of averages goes up. It is unbelievable that a person with his expertise said something so obviously non-obvious so confidently. Fortunately two people from the audience brought these points up, and predictably he could not give a clear answer. Something is not right here. In a sense, I saw hope.
