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mirc-dsi edited this page Sep 4, 2017 · 1 revision

Welcome to the IMRI-MIRC wiki! Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) is a widely used modality to obtain structural, functional and metabolic information about the physiology of interest. It provides good contrast between the different soft tissues of the body, which makes it especially useful in imaging the brain, muscles, heart and cancers compared with other medical imaging techniques such as Computed Tomography (CT) or X-rays. Unlike CT scans or traditional X-rays, MRI does not use ionizing radiation. Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) is a widely used modality to obtain structural, functional and metabolic information about the physiology of interest. MRI is a key component in healthcare sector. It provides a non-invasive and non-ionizing approach to diagnose pathologies along with significant internal and external contrast mechanisms for imaging structure, function and metabolism. It is integral part of routine clinical screening procedures for diseases like brain, breast cancer and so on. It plays a major role in the assessment of therapeutic efficacy. In spite of the tremendous value of diagnostic imaging, enthusiasm for more widespread screening is often tempered by high associated costs, and there is an urgent need for methods to increase screening throughput of MRI while maintaining diagnostic fidelity and reducing cost. This is particularly relevant to a populous country like India. MRI has been extensively used in the diagnosis and/or prognosis of diverse pathological conditions. However, due to high installation and maintenance cost, not many hospitals in tier 2/3 cities of populous countries like India can afford to have state of art MR scanners. The superconducting magnet of the MR scanner costs nearly half of the machine price. Therefore, non-superconducting magnets such as a combination of permanent magnets and electromagnets could be the path to enable portable MRI solutions. MRI market has been growing in the last three years at an average growth rate of 10-12% and this trend will continue in the next decades as MRI is non-invasive, non-contrast and non-radiation modality and has significant scope for growth in future. In US, there are approximately 25 MR scanners per million people. In India we have approximately one MR scanner per million people. This results in increase of load on existing MRI, becomes time consuming, and will not be cost effective. Developing Indigenous MRI will try to overcome some of the limitations.

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