Radboudumc receives 19 million euro for world’s strongest MRI scanner

A consortium of seven partners, led by the Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour (Radboud University), has received a €19 million Roadmap grant from NWO. It will be used to build the world’s first MRI scanner with a magnetic field strength of 14 Tesla in Nijmegen, Radboudumc writes in a press release.

In the DYNAMIC project, researchers will build the world’s first MRI scanner with a magnetic field strength of 14 Tesla. The scanner’s high sensitivity will allow scientists to image the brain in more detail and thereby better understand brain function, but will also enable them to gain new insights into mechanisms of diseases and their treatment throughout the body.

World’s first

“The new MRI scanner will be placed on the campus of Radboud university medical center, but the scanner will be a tremendous resource for the whole Dutch scientific community and for collaborations with international partners”, stresses David Norris, project leader and Professor of Magnetic Resonance Physics at the Donders Institute of Radboud University. “With this new sensitive scanner, we intend to open new areas of research for the entire scientific community.”

MRI headband is a result of a successful cross-pollination

Only a few people (fortunately) are familiar with the problem: They went through a painful MRI scan because they had been fitted with a cochlear.

Importance for brain disorders, medicine and neuroscience

The new scanner is of great importance for research into brain disorders, explains Anja van der Kolk, neuroradiologist/clinician-scientist at Radboud university medical centre. “The number of people with brain disorders is large and will only increase in the upcoming years. For many of these disorders no effective treatment is currently available, because we do not know how they develop. With the 14T MRI-scanner, we will be able to see in great detail, without needing surgery, what happens to the brain when it becomes ill, even at an early stage. With this information we hope to find new options for treatment, or even prevention, of these disorders.”