An experimental, high-field magnetic resonance imaging unit could help provide new ways to scan the brain by illuminating electrical discharges or even gauging the brain's pH. And it's coming soon to a future Iowa research facility.

On Tuesday, GE Healthcare said it beat out two rivals to land a contract at the University of Iowa Health Care's soon-to-be-built biomedical research center for an investigational 7-Tesla MRI scanner.

The device is being paid for by a National Institutes of Health grant received by Dr. Vincent Magnotta, an MRI researcher who specializes in neuro-radiology at the Iowa City hospital and will work with the equipment when the Pappajohn Biomedical Discovery Institute is finished in 2013.

Better resolution

Only a handful of 7-T MRIs are in use at research centers, and none has been cleared by the Food and Drug Administration for routine clinical scanning. A few companies, including Royal Philips Electronics and Siemens, make them, and have installed perhaps a few dozen at labs around the world.

GE spokeswoman Rebecca Hayne said she couldn't share specifics about how many units the company has sold, but she mentioned Waukesha, Wis.-based GE Healthcare has installed systems at Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif., University of California, San Francisco, Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee, and in Italy and Japan.

Although clinical work is still in the early stages, 7-T MRI offers a theoretical benefit over weaker magnets: better resolution.

"It's going to give you higher resolution, that's the immediate benefit, and a higher signal-to-noise ratio," Magnotta told DOTmed News.

Brain research

Neurology is one of the most promising fields for the high-powered magnetic technology, and in 2010, researchers published an atlas of the brain using 7-T MRI scans. In fact, Magnotta estimates about 75 percent of work on the 7-T MRI at the new center will be in neuroscience and psychiatry, and the other 25 percent in orthopedics.

One area in brain imaging where 7-T could be especially useful is in functional magnetic resonance imaging.

Currently, functional MRI scans let doctors understand activity in the brain by showing blood flow to different regions. But with more powerful magnets, researchers might be able to directly assess the electrical activity in firing neurons, Magnotta said.

"As you get a higher signal-to-noise ratio it should be theoretically be possible to more robustly measure that signal change," he said.

Sodium imaging

MRIs work by using magnetic fields to spin protons in hydrogen atoms. However, more powerful magnets could also let investigators use protons in different elements, such as sodium or phosphorous.

Sodium imaging could, for instance, enable earlier diagnosis of joint disease, as it could be used to measure cartilage concentrations around the knee. But with current 3-T MRIs, sodium imaging's resolution is often poor, Magnotta said.

"It looks like a grainy picture. At 7-T, it's really going to sharpen that up and give you sufficient signal strength to use MRI for sodium imaging," he said.

Brain's pH

Magnotta also hopes a more powerful MRI could help his team with their research in an intriguing area: the connection between the brain's pH and some neurological disorders, such as epilepsy and even panic attacks.

"We know there are certain disorders in which brain pH changes," he said.

For instance, two years ago, University of Iowa researchers published an article in Cell that suggested that, in mice, sensitivity to dipping pH levels, or rising acidity, in a part of the brain after breathing carbon dioxide was linked to a fear response. This has implications for humans, too, as it's known that inhaling carbon dioxide is more likely to induce a panic attack in those who suffer from panic disorders, as compared to others.

Already, Magnotta's team has developed protocols to check brain pH with 3-T scanners. But by moving to 7-T, they hope to get higher spatial resolution and to be able to see dynamic brain pH changes, probably by using phosphorous spectroscopy.

"At 7-T, you'll be able to make more accurate measurements within regions of interest," he said.

For now though, Magnotta and his colleagues have to wait for the center to be built, and the new scanner to be installed. He said the equipment should arrive around when the center's wrapped up, as there's an 18-month lead time for construction of the magnet.