The high field in-vivo NMR facility at Henry Ford Hospital services a wide variety NIH funded projects incorporating standard and specialized imaging and spectroscopy applications. This facility is instrumental in the research programs of 11 NIH funded investigators, and use is growing. This puts great demands on instrument reliability. Within the last 3 years, the gradient and RF subsystems have been rebuilt and upgraded to state of the art. The NMR systems are currently outfitted with Surrey Medical Instrument Systems (SMIS) consoles. Unfortunately, major problems have been encountered in the engineering and servicing of the consoles on these instruments, despite (and in some cases due to) the consistent upgrade of the console to the latest product developments. While low cost and flexible in their design, consistent difficulties have been encountered in identifying and correcting problems within the consoles and obtaining spare parts from the manufacturer in a timely fashion. The best long-term solution for correction of current engineering flaws in the design of these consoles, improvements in service, reliability of spare parts and consistent operation of these NMR systems is console replacement from a more reliable manufacturer. Varian Instruments has a long history of manufacturing sensitive and reliable NMR research consoles. Varian prides itself on RF chain stability and sensitivity. The improvements in reliability, flexibility and sensitivity of the instruments which would result from replacement of the SMIS consoles with Varian Inova Imaging/spectroscopy consoles would serve the wide variety of current and future NIH users of the NMR facility. In addition, Varian is a USA based company, consistent with government buy American policies.
