First Appeared Friday, 06 August '04

Powerful Magnet at QB3, Mission Bay Will Advance Imaging of Human Body, Elucidate Mechanisms of Disease

The delivery of a 36-ton whole body magnet not only attracted a lot of attention at the Mission Bay campus this week. It also signaled a big step in the quest to develop ways to image the human body in unprecedented detail and to greatly refine methods to diagnose and treat disease.

The “7 Tesla” (7T) superconducting magnet – one of the most powerful ever built for magnetic resonance imaging and spectroscopy – was placed on Monday (Aug. 2) on the first floor of the California Institute for Quantitative Biomedical Research (QB3) building, which will open in early 2005.

The magnet, which was constructed by GE Healthcare Technologies, is the first on the West Coast and fourth in the US. It is twice as big and has five times the field strength of most clinical magnetic resonance (MR) systems and includes nearly 250 miles of superconducting wire that, when in operation, carries a current of over 200 amps. Funding for the purchase and installation of the 7T magnet was provided by a combination of resources, including the School of Medicine, the Department of Radiology and the State of California. The 7T is a critical component of an ongoing UC Discovery Grant that supports collaborative research between scientists at UCSF, UC Berkeley and GE Healthcare Technologies to explore the applications of high field MR systems to human health.

Workers at Mission Bay on Aug. 2 moved the 36-ton magnet into the QB3 Building.

Researchers at QB3 are interested in using the 7T magnet as a tool for advancing biological discovery and medical diagnostics. Conventional MR exams, although very useful, may provide ambiguous or limited information concerning the functional characteristics of the anatomy. The new system offers a five-fold improvement in sensitivity over those now used clinically, says Sarah Nelson, PhD, professor of radiology and chair of the Division of Bioengineering at UCSF. She will direct the Margaret Hart Surbeck Laboratory of Advanced Imaging at QB3 and was recently named the Margaret Hart Surbeck Distinguished Professor of Advanced Imaging at UCSF. She is also a professor of Bioengineering at UC Berkeley.

The new facility and supporting electronics will be used by Nelson and her colleagues, Daniel Vigneron, PhD, Sharmila Majumdar, PhD and John Kurhanewicz, PhD, who are experts in developing and applying new MR capabilities, to produce images of much finer structures and functional processes than has been previously possible. Patients and healthy volunteers will be examined with this noninvasive technology in order to develop the system's full capability for providing improved anatomic images and valuable information concerning tissue metabolites and the mechanisms of disease progression.

Use of the 7T magnet will allow researchers to evaluate blood vessels 100-200 microns in diameter (a micron is one millionth of a meter), detect subtle changes in cartilage thickness associated with early stages of osteoarthritis, spot small disruptions in soft tissue related to invasive cancers, and detect abnormalities in brain structure caused by neurological diseases.

The new imaging laboratory at QB3 will also focus on analyzing the metabolic characteristics of living tissue to improve diagnosis and treatment. Current and less powerful MR systems have contributed to diagnosis of patients with brain and prostate cancers, but the new 7T scanner will allow much greater sensitivity and specificity to detect telltale chemical signals associated with different cancers and different regions of a tumor, says Nelson.

The 7T magnet was shipped to Mission Bay this week at room temperature. Later this year, it will be cooled down, initially with liquid nitrogen, then with liquid helium, and finally energized. Once the energization is complete and the power supply disconnected, the magnet will operate continuously for years.

The magnet was placed in a 400-ton steel-shield room roughly 19 feet by 38 feet to contain the fringe field from the magnet and allow computers and other sensitive equipment to be placed close to the magnet room.

The 7T magnet in what will be part of Margaret Hart Surbeck Laboratory of Advanced Imaging at QB3. Photos by Ben Shim, Turner Construction Company.

In addition to research, the 7T scanner will be an important resource for training graduate and medical students, says Nelson. The new QB3 facility will take advantage of the infrastructure provided by the joint UCSF/UCB Bioengineering Graduate Group and provide a group of uniquely qualified individuals who are well suited for academic research or positions in the private sector.

“Students and postdoctoral fellows will not only obtain practical experience in using high-field MR systems but will participate in cutting-edge research projects,” says Nelson. “This will permit them to appreciate the underlying MR physics and to develop a thorough understanding of the biological basis for designing imaging and spectroscopy protocols that are tailored to specific applications.”

QB3 – the California Institute for Quantitative Biomedical Research --is a partnership between UCSF, UC Berkeley and UC Santa Cruz that was established to bring together the powerful quantitative tools of the physical sciences, engineering and mathematics to tackle complex biological problems. At the celebration that was held to welcome the 7T magnet, Regis Kelly, PhD, the Executive Director of QB3, acknowledged the contributions provided by the academic and industrial partners involved in the project and heralded it as a prime example of the unique opportunities that have been made possible by QB3.

These and other cutting-edge research programs at QB3 will harness the quantitative sciences to increase the understanding of biological systems at all levels of complexity -- from atoms and protein molecules to cells, tissues, organs and the entire organism. This long-sought integration allows researchers to attack problems that have been simply unapproachable before, setting the stage for fundamental new discoveries, new products and new technologies for the benefit of human health.

Source: Andy Evangelista and Wallace Ravven

Links:

Institute for Quantitative Biomedical Research

Advances in Imaging – Sarah Nelson

UCSF Mission Bay