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Random question bc I'm bored. I had a random thought on why there's a helium shortage and upon looking that up they said it's because of mri's! Since helium is needed to cool the magnet. Interesting.

Anyways trying to find out more about mri's, I wanted to know when the 3T model came out, or rather first used but can't find anything. Only that "it's better"

So knowing that many people here have had many mri's, thought one or two of you may know!

Thank again. Also another question, when helium becomes too rare, what do you think about mri's not being a viable source of imaging?

ShirleyTemple wrote:Random question bc I'm bored. I had a random thought on why there's a helium shortage and upon looking that up they said it's because of mri's! Since helium is needed to cool the magnet. Interesting.

Anyways trying to find out more about mri's, I wanted to know when the 3T model came out, or rather first used but can't find anything. Only that "it's better"

So knowing that many people here have had many mri's, thought one or two of you may know!

Thank again. Also another question, when helium becomes too rare, what do you think about mri's not being a viable source of imaging?

Helium is the #2 element. Hydrogen is #1. Hydrogen is the most common element, and helium is the product of nuclear fusion. The element that makes up the sun is hydrogen. It is busy 24 hours a day making helium out of its hydrogen. The only problem with helium is it is lighter than just about anything, and when it's free to do so, it floats up, up, and away. That makes it hard to find, except locked in rocks.

Hydrogen we have plenty of, and a good thing too, because together with oxygen, it makes all the water on earth.

Helium is not as rare as the rare earths that make the magnets in electric car motors. Those come from China. They are more likely to be a problem if we run short. It's just that with increased use of the Large Hadron Collider, and MRIs of 3T to 7T, helium balloons are just not going to be so cheap.

Do we care? We must look at what is likely to become a much more common use of helium: suicide. It is a cheap, relatively painless, and easy method of killing yourself.

With the end of the aging baby boomer's life soon at hand, this is likely to become a more common use of helium. Helium will not get as rare as to cause a suicide shortage. Not to worry. Before that happens, some drug company will probably come up with a suicide pill that outsells viagra.

Well, perhaps it doesn't have as good a potential as viagra: like the battery in a cruise missile, you only need it once... Dr. Kevorkian spent 9 years in jail for assisting with suicide, but if he had limited his clientele to very very rich people he would not have had to. Helium is the poor man's way out, but may be somewhat less so in the future. MRIs are still more profitable than balloons.

How could you ask a question about MRIs and end up talking about assisted suicide? Interesting.

LOL i know. I was like cool interesting read about Helium, then goes straight to suicide, and im like "what" that's not my question.

Lol so yeah, the question is still, when did our current MRI 3T hit the market and into consumer/hospital usage.

ShirleyTemple wrote:Anyways trying to find out more about mri's, I wanted to know when the 3T model came out, or rather first used but can't find anything. Only that "it's better"

Here's an article from Medline that compares 1.5T with 3T MRI which states...
http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/498295_1

Market data in late 2004 indicate that 3T systems make up 25% of new high-field MR purchases.

A blurb from Siemens states that...
https://www.siemens.com/history/en/news ... gnetom.htm

At the beginning of 2000, it had already become clear that a field strength of 3 Tesla marked the upper limit for routine clinical operation.

So the 3T likely started being used clinically around the late 90's.

Another interesting thing about helium is that it's a particularly difficult gas to contain. In grad school, our lab used 99.95% pure helium to pressurize the eluent bottles of an HPLC system. It seeped right through the HDPE bottles.

Yes, I know it's one of our forbidden words. But the Compassion and Choices groups will point you in the direction of helium. If there's a shortage, it will be important to a lot of people who don't necessarily want to live. Don't worry about manufacturers of MRI machines. They will charge what the market will bear.

It may be too expensive to buy a party balloon and talk like a cartoon character, though.

MRI is interesting. It uses magnetism to make all the magnetic molecules line up the same way. Then it uses a radio pulse as well. The magnetic field is generated by a strong current in coils wrapped around a gigantic core. This is an electromagnet. The coils are supercooled to make them into superconductors. That means that at those low temperatures the resistance of the coils is very low, so the current can be astronomically high. That is why the resulting electromagnet is so strong. A Tesla is an ungodly large amount of magnetic field strength: enough to alter the spin of nearly all the hydrogen atoms in all the water in your head, or whatever part they are examining.

The pulse of current through the electromagnet is so quick and strong that it makes a noise like a sledgehammer when it turns on. See http://science.howstuffworks.com/mri.htm