A Siemens Healthineers MAGNETOM Terra.X Impulse Edition 7T MR scanner is up and running at Otto von Guericke’s Magdeburg in Germany following a $16.2 million (€15 million) installation.

The university is the second site in the world, after the University of California in Berkeley, to utilize the system, which is designed to assess the finest structures inside the brain. What distinguishes the two is that the European system is built with AI image reconstruction algorithms.

It will be used with another 7T MR system in the university’s Center for Advanced Medical Engineering (CAME) to conduct research as a joint infrastructure, known as core facilities, for outside institutions, including the Leibniz Institute for Neurobiology, the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases, the German Center for Mental Health, and STIMULATE, the medical research campus.
“In future, it will be possible to differentiate structures and functions within the cortex, that is the outer layer of the brain that contains our neurons in a layer only three millimeters thick, and expand our understanding of the brain and also of diseases,” said professor Dr. Oliver Speck, the spokesperson for CAME, in a statement.

Magdeburg performs the highest-resolution 7T MR exams on humans worldwide.

The MAGNETOM Terra.X Impulse Edition has an almost three-meter-long cylinder-shaped magnet with a diameter of nearly three meters, and a whole-body gradient system of 200 mT/m / 900T/m/s.

At its virtual Shape 23 keynote meeting in November 2022, Siemens Healthineers discussed another 7T MR scanner under development, its MAGNETOM Terra.X. Designed for neurological and musculoskeletal imaging, MAGNETOM Terra.X has a whole-body gradient system of 135 mT/m / 250 T/m/s. It also has AI image reconstruction technology for reducing scanning time by up to 50%, can darken image impression, and visualize sodium in the body and the metabolism process.

"While MAGNETOM Terra.X with the whole-body gradient system is planned to be released for clinical use, there are no such plans for MAGNETOM Terra.X Impulse Edition, Nicolas Behl, global marketing manager of MRI Systems at Siemens Healthineers, told HCB News, saying it will remain a "particularly powerful research system."

The EU, Germany’s Saxony-Anhalt state and the European Regional Development Fund financed the installation.

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