High-powered 7T MRI scanner arrives at Sunnybrook

TORONTO – Sunnybrook Health Sciences has taken delivery of a 7-Tesla (7T) magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machine – the first in the city of Toronto. The machine, housed next to the new Garry Hurvitz Brain Sciences Centre, produces images in unprecedented detail, allowing researchers to see pathologies in the nervous system never seen before with MRI.

The 7T MRI scanner is part of the Toronto Neuro-Immunology/Imaging Consortium (TONIIC), a multi-site collaborative research initiative focused on neuroimmunology and neuroimaging for diseases such as stroke, multiple sclerosis and cancer.

TONIIC is made up of hospital and academic institutions across Toronto, including Sunnybrook, Baycrest, SickKids, University Health Network (UHN), Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH), Unity Health Toronto (St. Michael’s Hospital) and the University of Toronto’s Temerty Faculty of Medicine.

Although construction of the facility is still underway, 7T MRI will soon transform the way Toronto researchers see, understand and study novel approaches for diagnosing, monitoring and treating the brain.

The scanner, manufactured by Siemens Healthineers, is one of only three clinical 7T systems in Canada. Getting the scanner here from Europe was a multi-stage effort. It was flown to Chicago on one of the few heavy-lift planes equipped to transport the 7T magnet.

From there, it was transported by road the rest of the way to Toronto. The 7T MRI scanner was maintained on route with liquid helium to keep its inner core extremely cold. This minimized the amount of additional liquid helium that will be needed to fill the magnet in Toronto during installation, when electric current will be applied to achieve the ultra-high magnetic field strength of 7T.

Dr. Kâmil Uludağ and Dr. Simon Graham, senior scientists in the Physical Sciences and Hurvitz Brain Sciences Program at Sunnybrook, are both harnessing 7T MRI technology to explore fundamental methodological research and to advance clinical applications of MRI.

The focus of Dr. Uludağ’s work is integrating MRI techniques into clinical research for conditions such as brain tumors, depression, OCD, neurodegeneration and Alzheimer’s disease.

Dr. Graham’s work focuses on the applications of MRI of brain activity in healthy individuals as well as patients suffering from stroke, Alzheimer’s Disease, brain cancer and traumatic brain injury, as well as improving the use of MRI and other associated medical devices.

Source: Anna McClellan