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The world’s strongest MRI machines are pushing human imaging to new limits

On a cold morning in Minneapolis last December, a man walked into a research centre to venture where only pigs had gone before: into the strongest magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machine built to scan the human body.

On a cold morning in Minneapolis last December, a man walked into a research centre to venture where only pigs had gone before: into the strongest magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machine built to scan the human body.

First, he changed into a hospital gown, and researchers made sure he had no metal on his body: no piercings, rings, metal implants or pacemakers. Any metal could be ripped out by the immensely powerful, 10.5-tesla magnet — weighing almost 3 times more than a Boeing 737 aeroplane and a full 50% more powerful than the strongest magnets approved for clinical use. Days earlier, he had passed a check-up that included a baseline test of his sense of balance to make sure that any dizziness from exposure to the magnets could be assessed properly. In the MRI room at the University of Minnesota’s Center for Magnetic Resonance Research, he lay down inside a 4-metre-long tube, surrounded by 110 tonnes of magnet and 600 tonnes of iron shielding, for an hour’s worth of imaging of his hips, whose thin cartilage would test the limits of the machine’s resolution.

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