Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) is an essential tool for the diagnosis and treatment of musculoskeletal conditions.
There are two established trends in extremity MRI: i) employing full-blown whole-body systems, which deliver strong magnetic fields (> 1.5 T) and thereby the highest quality images, although they are highly expensive and often an overkill; and ii) smaller, medium-field, dedicated scanners for hands, elbows, knees, shoulders or ankles. The latter yield images with lower quality but constitute the only viable option for modest-sized clinics such as physiotherapy and rheumatology centers, or even sports clubs, due to their reduced manufacturing, siting, and maintenance costs. Typical magnetic field strengths in this case range from 0.2 to 0.5 T, reaching some compromise between image quality, scanner size, and price.
In this project, we propose a new generation of extremity MRI scanners which operate at even lower fields, are light, and exploit efficient spatial encoding schemes and image reconstruction techniques to boost the diagnostic value of the resulting images, thereby shifting the paradigm from extremely sophisticated and expensive hardware to extremely efficient methods.
We have already demonstrated the viability of a portable, very low weight (< 100 kg) MRI scanner, which can be sited at the point of care and is affordable by small clinics or even humble sports clubs (< 20 k€). This is our first-generation Physiotherapy/Rheumatology (PR) scanner (see figure), which we have successfully used for producing knee images featuring bone, tendon and soft tissue contrast, with spatial resolution of around 2 mm in a total acquisition time of twelve minutes. Making use of new encoding and reconstruction methods developed and/or licensed exclusively to the consortium, the quality of these images will be greatly enhanced as part of this project, making this system highly efficient in terms of quality-price ratio. This represents an enormous commercial opportunity which PhysMRI (project coordinator) plans to exploit and which defines the goals of this project.
