Designing and building a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) system is no easy undertaking, especially when you’re part of an international collaboration trying to make the system more accessible and comfortable.

But that is what Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington researchers Ben Parkinson and Associate Professor Edgar Rodríguez are doing, with exciting results.

“To create an MRI system, you need to bring together many custom-designed hardware pieces,” says Ben, who is based in the University’s Robinson Research Institute. “These pieces need to work together beautifully to get good images and they also need to work for the patient and the medical provider using the system.

“You can imagine there’s a lot of tuning to get everything working to a clinical standard. We needed to be part of an international team to bring together the expertise to pull this off.”

The Robinson Research Institute has extensive experience in high-temperature superconducting (HTS) magnets. This led Ben to connect with researchers at the University of Minnesota in the United States who wanted to use an HTS magnet in an MRI machine they were working on, which they were hoping would be more accessible and affordable than current systems.

“MRI systems are a great way of quickly and effectively getting to the bottom of diseases, but current systems are expensive or impractical in many parts of the world,” says Ben. “Using HTS magnets is a great way to address these issues, as they don’t need as much machine infrastructure as a conventional system. We’ve also managed to make them much smaller.”

Funded by the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering, a part of National Institutes of Health in the United States, this international effort involves researchers from Columbia University, Yale University, Harvard University, and the University of Sao Paulo and is led by Professor Garwood at University of Minnesota.

To develop usability, Ben approached Edgar and his team from the University’s School of Design Innovation.

“Our MRI concept is a little different, because it allows the patient to sit up during the scan,” says Ben. “This makes the machine easier to install and should also reduce patient anxiety when getting an MRI, which is a real problem for many patients with current machines.”

After what Ben calls “a fairly intensive 18 months”, Edgar and his team delivered a prototype patient interface that allows the patient to sit in a chair that gently moves their head into the helmet-like scanner, leaving the rest of their body free. Either the MRI technician or the patient can control the leg rest, back support, head support, and chair height. The scanner also has a window, so patients can see out during the scan, making the experience less claustrophobic.

With the interface ready to go, Ben and his team at Robinson are putting the finishing touches on the HTS magnet. All the components will then be shipped to the University of Minnesota where the final MRI system will be put together.

“When the system comes together—hopefully later this year—we’ll see how successful we’ve been. It will be an exciting time,” Ben says.