A MAGNETIC resonance imaging (MRI) scanner has taken its first blurry shots of the human brain without using massive magnets.
MRI scanners image the human body by detecting how hydrogen atoms respond to magnetic fields. They typically require fields about 100,000 times stronger than the Earth’s, making it dangerous for people with metal implants, and expensive.
Now Vadim Zotev of Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico and colleagues have eliminated the need for large fields by using ultra-sensitive magnetic sensors called superconducting quantum interference devices (). The biggest field they used was 30 millitesla, just 1000 times…
