State-of-the-art MRI machine to advance research on brain's inner workings
Thanks to an equipment grant from the National Institutes of Health, the University of Arizona will be among the first institutions in the country to receive a new MRI system that can produce clearer and more comprehensive images of the brain.
Ted Trouard, professor emeritus of biomedical engineering and professor of medical imaging, with the university's current MRI instrument.
Zoe Lambert/Department of Biomedical Engineering
The National Institutes of Health has awarded University of Arizona researchers a $2 million High-End Instrumentation grant to help purchase an advanced 3Tesla MRI instrument for studying the human brain. The university will be among the first institutions in the country to receive the new model, which is manufactured by Siemens Healthineers.
These NIH grants are highly competitive and fund the purchase of a biomedical research instrument worth up to $2 million, rather than a specific research project. Eighteen UArizona investigators working on nearly two dozen projects already have plans for how to use the instrument.
The system, scheduled for delivery in fall 2023, will have advanced hardware that can produce clearer and more comprehensive images of the brain with greater speed.
"The new instrument will be the most powerful FDA-approved 3T MRI instrument in the world, allowing researchers to obtain the most detailed images possible," said Ted Trouard, professor emeritus of biomedical engineering in the College of Engineering, professor of medical imaging in the College of Medicine – Tucson and principal investigator on the grant. "It will dramatically enhance current research projects and enable new research directions and discoveries."