Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

The objective of this project is to implement and develop the technology of field-cycled Magnetic Resonance Imaging (FCMRI). The potential impact of this project is the achievement of a new, versatile NMR-based imaging modality with possible applications in the study of biomaterials, industrial process tomography, and small animal imaging. During the past five years, I have worked on the development of a new approach to MRI, called field-cycled MRI. In essence, FCMRI applies the established techniques of field-cycled NMR to the formation of MR images. The fundamental innovation of FCMRI is the replacement of the static magnetic field used in normal MRI with two dynamically controlled magnetic fields. During my post-doctoral fellowship, we developed the first FCMRI prototype scanner at Stanford University (which we called pMRI) and successfully collected images of phantoms, small animals, and human hands. During the past five years, I have established a new lab at the University of Western Ontario, and constructed a larger, more powerful version of the FCMRI system. Potential advantages of FCMRI include: a nearly silent scanner; reduced image artifacts due to magnetic susceptibility differences in the object (e.g. to monitor fluid transport processes through porous media for materials science applications, or to allow imaging in the vicinity of an atificial knee for medical applications); the ability to increase the polarizing field strength without increasing absorbed RF power (SAR); increased versatility in MR image contrast; and the potential for combined positron emission tomography (PET) and MRI systems. In this research project, I will focus on the detailed investigation of the method and technology of FCMRI, followed by application investigation and development.