The transmit performance of the RF coil has been tested with a 8 transceiver coil prototype. With two other 11.7T MRI scanners (NIH USA and South Korea), and one in preparation in the UK, the University of Glasgow now is a central actor. The PI, Shajan Gunamony, now participates in the british project. The development of the Pasteur package with universal pulses on the software platform of the 7T Siemens Terra could have implications for clinical routine at 7T. More sequences and tools have been developped and are currently unmatched in the industrial sector. Following the work, Siemens has offered funding for a PhD thesis to work on pTx jointly with CEA. Some Philips users have furthermore converted the format of some universal pulses developed on the Siemens platform to make them work on their systems, making the approach even more universal. The sequences allow solving to a great extent the RF field inhomogeneity problem in the brain at 7T, with zero time penalty for the user and no expertise required. It could be a game changer to leverage the potential of 7T scanners in the clinic. The package is available to the community under a C2P agreement and has been disseminated to about 30 sites worldwide. In this context, the University of Glasgow, DZNE and CEA together applied to an EIC transition grant to commercialize a new 7T RF coil, incorporating in the package universal pulses and SAR management. The market of 7T to date yet was deemed non competitive compared to other high-impact endeavors so that the application was unsuccessful. The impact of the third order shims revealed by the gradient-magnet interaction studies was also new. By shedding light on these problems, one can hope that vendors and gradient coil designers take them more into consideration.
Motion correction is of paramount importance and to date there is no clear game-changer in the industrial sector. The developments carried out by ETH and DZNE could lead to solutions of interest to the industrials also at lower fields. It remains to be determined whether the developments are worth a commercialization. Finally, the MR thermometry results published by CEA and Skope present the first strong evidence that there could be more heat dissipation in the brain than the theoretical models suggest. It is the first time that the small temperature rises induced by RF fields in MRI could be measured with such precision and accuracy, non invasively, in the human brain. Such technology thereby could be of use to verify the safety limits used in the mobile phone industry. Last but not least, the Skope technology has turned already invaluable at 11.7T. The company should thus benefit from additional exposure.
