This Partnerships for Innovation: Building Innovation Capacity (PFI: BIC) project from Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) is based on the discovery of new designs for tomorrow's magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). These designs enable the development of MRI systems that reduce significantly the use of helium. To understand this significance, global shortages in helium and the predictions that the situation is only going to get worse have seriously affected both industry and government. The report by the National Academy of Science in 2010 predicted that demand would exceed world supply by 2017. Up to now, liquid helium has been necessary to surround the MRI main magnets in a sufficiently cold 'bath' for their wire to be 'superconducting'. It is noted that superconductivity is crucial as it eliminates electrical power losses, enables high magnetic fields, and keeps the MRI operating under the ultra-stable conditions needed for high-quality imaging. The design breakthroughs for 0.5-3 Tesla magnetic field strengths prove that new higher-temperature superconducting material can be used for the MRI wire bundles, and the large helium bath can be eliminated. The intellectual merit lies in successfully modeling the MRI machine in order, for example, to find the exact mathematical placement of wire bundles that leads to the most uniform magnetic field possible with the least amount of superconductor wire. Three decades of work at CWRU have resulted in a unique and proven design technology for optimizing MRI coil magnets and hardware.
The broader impacts of this research are significant. The world has already seen curtailment in standard MRI main-magnet manufacturing of high magnetic field MRI machines because of higher helium prices. If the global use of helium for MRIs is not reduced, the cost of MRI imaging will go up for the public. This will likely reduce the usage of MRI at a time of expressed desire for the expansion of human healthcare. Academic and industrial budgets for superconducting magnet research have been hard hit by increased helium costs. A MRI main magnet with no liquid helium bath, yet with performance rivaling the standard shielded 1.5-Tesla superconducting MRI system, will have significant impact on the global market place. The two primary partners, Hyper Tech and Quality Electrodynamics, and five other companies (ViewRay Inc., AllTech Medical Systems, GE Healthcare, Philips Healthcare, and Toshiba Medical Systems) which have prepared strong letters of interest, provide evidence of this impact through their expressed enthusiasm for the project target. The immediate takeaway for Hyper Tech, as a primary partner, is a final set of prototype-ready magnet blueprints, with both high and low magnetic field options, and a viable commercialization path for an important application of its superconducting wire product. For Quality Electrodynamics, the other primary partner, the takeaways start with the support hardware designs for the complete MRI system, as new manufacturing products, and extend to a possible major partnership with Hyper Tech for in-house main magnet manufacturing. Additionally, all 7 firms not only seek to participate in this exciting technical venture, they also want an inside track to recruiting the next generation of highly educated imaging personnel trained in the program. Upwards of 60 undergraduates, graduate, and postgraduate MRI alumni, including the entrepreneurial degree holders, have come out of the CWRU physics group, many of whom now work with a dozen companies that have partnered with the group throughout the years. Future students as well as new MRI magnets are key outcomes of the present MRI design program.
Partners at the inception of the project are the lead academic institution and the two primary small business partners. The principal unit of the lead institution is Ohio Platform for Tomorrow's Industrial Medical Imaging Systems and Equipment (OPTIMISE) in the CWRU physics department. OPTIMISE is an outgrowth of a long and rich history of research and education carried out with other CWRU units: the biomedical engineering, chemistry, mathematics, and radiology departments, and the CWRU pioneering entrepreneurial physics master's degree program. The two technology-based business partners are Hyper Tech Inc. (Columbus, Ohio) and Quality Electrodynamics (QED) LLC (Mayfield Village, Ohio).
