ISMRM 2019

The 27th Annual Scientific Meeting of the ISMRM was held in Montreal last week. From the lab, Ms. Lee SH and Ms. Yoo SK each presented a digital poster and Dr. Lee SK gave a 30 min lecture on MR systems engineering. The conference hall is familiar to old-timers since there was another ISMRM meeting in 2011 in the same place. The climate was pleasant and the dining options were excellent. One of the (personal) highlights was that GE officially unveiled the compact head-only 3T scanner, dubbed ESP, as a research-only, made-to-order scanner. Abstracts related to what the Lab is working on included: (1) high temporal resolution eddy current imaging (Xiaohong Joe Zhou), (2) habenula MRI at 3T (Haacke), and (3) B0 simulation for head motion (Bowtell).

Visit from GRC

Tom Foo and Desmond Yeo from GE Global Research Center visited the SKKU Suwon campus on 5/3 Friday. Tom, a Chief scientist at the 120 year-old research center in upstate New York, gave a short presentation on the latest MRI technologies being developed at GRC to the students in the Lab. Desmond, a Technology leader at the MRI and Superconducting magnet laboratory, helped answer questions from the students, before taking a short campus tour together with Tom and Dr. Lee SK. The discussions also touched upon combined MR and ultrasound imaging technology. Prof. Jinhyoung Park joined the discussion later in the presentation session and exchanged ideas for potential GE-SKKU collaboration for Korean government funding. Overall, the short GRC visit was very productive and helpful to the students, while being comfortably casual. 

ICMRI 2019 and Awards

The 2019 International Congress on MRI (ICMRI 2019) was held in Seoul, from March 28th to 30th. Five research posters were presented from the Lab in the conference in the MR Engineering session, and Dr. Lee SK presented a talk on 7T MRI at SKKU. The poster by Mr. Hankyeol Lee was selected for the best poster award in the session! And all the participants had a good time together at the conference buffet dinner. Unexpectedly, Seon-Ha Hwang, a recent alumnus of the Lab, got the 1st prize (out of several hundreds!) in the dinner table lucky draw. Separately, Jun-Ho Kim and Jung-Hyun Kim were selected by the SKKU GBME department as the best undergraduate research team for their gelatin phantom work which was presented at this conference. Congratulations to all the award recipients!

MR Engineering posters to be presented at icMRI

The 2019 annual meeting of KSMRM, International Congress on MRI, will be held on March 28 - 30 in Seoul. Five MR Engineering posters will be presented at the meeting by the authors from the Lab. All in the same power pitch session, they are:

• So-Hee Lee et al., Multi-orientation R2* mapping of Intact Ex-vivo Rhesus Monkey Brain at 7T
• Byeongpan Song et al., Inductively Coupled RF coil for Imaging 40 um-thick Histology Sample in a Clinical Scanner
• Hankyeol Lee et al., Real-time imaging of periodically varying electric current in a wire phantom with 4.5 ms temporal resolution
• Jun-Ho Kim et al., Fabrication of a spherical inclusion phantom for validation of magnetic resonance-based magnetic susceptibility imaging
• Hyeong Seop Kim et al., Human 7T multi-channel RF coil development for high-resolution visual cortex imaging

Class of 2019, GBME of SKKU

A small but very significant ceremony was held at the N Center lecture room on Feb 25, to celebrate the graduation from the GBME department of 6 bachelors and several Master's and PhD degree recipients. Of those the highlight was clearly on the small number of graduating seniors who were admitted to SKKU in 2015, as the first class of the newly minted Biomedical Engineering department of the university. Out of thirty who entered, only six graduated but this is not abnormal given the mandatory military service required of the male students. Seonha Hwang, who worked as an undergraduate intern for 3 years with Dr. Lee SK, got the highest GPA and was presented with the summa cum laude award by the Vice President of the university (and on a separate occasion same day in Seoul, also by the President of this 620 year-old university). It was reported that most of the 6 graduating seniors went on to do research at a graduate school (one went to Samsung), although none came to GBME. It is understandable that they could have looked for more established and experienced research labs and departments. GBME is widely expected to grow into one of those places in the near future.

ISMRM meeting presentations scheduled

This year's ISMRM meeting will be held in Montreal, Canada in May. Today the abstract decision was mailed to the first authors (it appears) and the lab's presentation schedule is set. This year, there will be two posters by the two graduate students: Seulki Yoo, on B0 homogeneity improvement by head-tilting, and Sohee Lee, on numerical simulation of B0 variation by respiration. Congratulations to both for being selected for presentation! In addition, Dr. Lee SK will give an invited educational lecture on MR systems overview on Saturday morning. The time table is

• Saturday 8 am: SK Lee, lecture
• Monday 915 am: Sohee Lee, ePoster
• Tuesday 6 pm? : (Maybe Korean night)
• Thursday 7 am: SK Lee moderating in a Sunrise educational session
• Thursday 915 am: Seulki Yoo, ePoster.

Some of our newer, more "crazy" research on 7T ex-vivo and RF-related projects will likely be presented in next year's meeting. We will see!

Yet another breakthrough in gradient technology

The picture above looks like a usual T1-weighted MR image but it was in fact obtained from a highly unusual set of gradient coils which was recently invented by GE. Called Magnus, the gradient coil inserts into a clinical 3T whole-body scanner to boost the imaging speed and gradient encoding power dramatically compared to a conventional scanner. The formal performance metrics are: 200 mT/m and 500 T/m/s, which compare with 80 mT/m and 200 T/m/s for the most expensive clinical scanner available today. What is even more important is that the design of the gradient coil, targeting specifically human head imaging, allows operation near the design limit without human peripheral nerve stimulation, which is known to limit gradient performance in conventional designs. This remarkable achievement was made from a team at GE Global Research in Niskayuna, NY, under a grant from US Department of Defense, and is well on its way to define the next generation of MR neuroimaging hardware. On a brief demo run, the team has shown high b-value (at 2000 s/mm^2) whole-head diffusion imaging with TE of 36 milliseconds!, which compares with a typical TE of over 60 msec in conventional scanners. The new gradient coil is planned to be installed in Walter Reed Military Medical Center in Bethesda, MD (near Washington DC) in the summer.