This is a request to purchase a 3 Tesla Siemens Verio 32-hannel magnetic resonance imaging scanner. This instrument will facilitate extensive research into the neuroscience of obesity, smoking, Alzheimer's disease, and brain recovery injury at the University of Kansas Medical Center. We have an extremely talented and productive group of qualifying investigators who are supported by an outstanding group of imaging scientists. These individuals have been using an existing Siemens Allegra head-only MRI instrument and made considerable advances. However, this system is based on a >10-year old outdated design, lacks many of the features that are available on state-of-the-art systems, and precludes our sharing our technical developments which are platform specific. Moreover, the existing system is becoming so busy that there is inadequate time available for the many exciting projects that we propose to carry out. Finally, our research program is heavily directed towards neuroimaging studies in obesity - National Institutes of Health focus area. Although we have made considerable progress, we are limited in our ability to scan a considerable portion of this population because of the limited bore size of our head-only Allegra scanner which prevents many obese subjects from taking part in these studies. A new Verio scanner will solve all of these limitations and will allow us to move our research forward and to expand into new areas of research.
The purchase of a state-of-the-art 3 Tesla Siemens Verio MRI research scanner will allow the researchers to carry out vital scientific studies into the brain involvement in obesity, smoking, Alzheimer's disease, recovery from brain injury, and learning. The presence of this instrument will help create numerous scientific and support jobs as well as maintain many others at the University of Kansas Medical Center and at Siemens Medical Solutions USA, Inc. The Siemens Verio scanner is designed to be environmentally low impact: low energy consumption, zero helium boil-off technology, and reduced product mass and plastic parts labeled for recycling so that most materials can be reused.
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