[BIC-announce] Upgrade of 3T Trio to Prisma in December 2016

[Rick Hoge]

Dear MRI users,

Thanks to those of you who attended last month’s town hall meeting regarding the BIC’s 3T facility.  I am happy that we can now announce that our CFI application to upgrade our 3T to a 64-channel multinuclear Prisma has been funded in full.  The fund has just been officially opened, and we are working to finalize the PO so that Siemens can schedule the upgrade for December 2016.

As you can imagine, finding an optimal time for the upgrade has been a challenging exercise.  Although I realize the upgrade will be a disruption to some, I would like to stress that the Prisma will represent a significant advance in our imaging capabilities with improved shimming, stronger gradients, and the ability to perform multinuclear spectroscopy (P, Na etc.)  I believe that in the vast majority of cases, five months lead-time will be sufficient for researchers to adapt study designs to avoid significant confounding effects from the scanner upgrade.  The standard strategy for avoiding bias is to counterbalance imaging sessions so that similar numbers of (e.g.) patients and controls are imaged on each scanner variant.  Longitudinal studies pose a greater challenge, but we will organize a series of test-retest scans before and after that will help identify any systematic effects associated with a given scanner.

I would encourage anyone who is concerned about adjusting their study design to contact Mike and/or Ilana;  we will do our best to ensure that the upgrade does not impact anyone’s ability to publish data acquired on this system.

Thanks to all for your contributions in what has been a truly flourishing MRI program.

Kind regards,

Rick

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Rick Hoge, Ph.D.
Senior MRI Physicist
McConnell Brain Imaging Centre, Montreal Neurological Institute
Associate Professor, Dept. of Neurology & Neurosurgery
Associate Member, Dept. of Biomedical Engineering
McGill University
rick.hoge at mcgill.ca
514-398-1929



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