Siemens 9.4 Tesla MRI scanner

Siemens 9.4 Tesla MRI scanner is one of the most powerful scanners till today. The installation of the 9.4 Tesla 50 tonnes scanner was a major operation. The scanner was then lifted and rolled inside using a 100 tonne hoisting platform and placed in a 620 tonne steel cage. The most striking differences between 7T and 9.4T are the even shorter RF wave length and the significantly increased susceptibility effects. The short wave length and thus locally very confined excitation patterns actually increase the flexibility and effectiveness of parallel transmit techniques and lead us to the design of transmit arrays with 16 independent loops. Classic FSE and SE T1 or T2-weighted imaging techniques suffer from serious SAR-limitations and B1-dependent contrast variations in many applications. Spectroscopy fMRI and other demanding techniques show promising results in the clinical field.