9.4T Varian MRI System and Animal Handling Facilities

Adjacent to the 9.4 Tesla MRI laboratory is a 150 ft2 fully equipped surgical facility (rodent ventilator, rodent respirator, anesthesia vaporizer, gas administration units, temperature controllers (and circulating water baths), a warm air circulator, an operating microscope, surgical drills, electrocautery, microsurgical and general surgery tools, an operating light and autoclave.  Triple beam mechanical balance, isoflurane/halothane scavengers, and other standard surgical equipment is available.

Physiological monitoring is possible using either a BioPac (Goleta, CA)  Systems MP150 Data acquisition system with pneumatic or hydraulic probes, or one of two MRI compatible physiological monitoring systems:  an SA Instruments (Bayshore, NY) model 1025 monitoring and gating system, or an MRI compatible BioSpin monitoring and gating system.

The Varian 9.4 T 21 cm bore animal imaging and spectroscopy system was recently upgraded to the Varian Direct Drive Platform. This upgrade included 2 channel Transmit / 4 channel Receive capability. A 12 cm ID, 14 channel (high power) shim gradient set (60 G/cm, Magnex Sci., Oxford, UK) was installed along with a Copley 266 gradient amplifier (Analogic, MA) and a 10 amp/channel shim power supply (Resonance Research Inc., Billerica, MA).  Transmit body coils (for rats and mice) along with 4 channel receive surface coils for proton imaging, and a pulsed arterial labeling coil arrangement will be delivered in December. In addition, we have purchased 1-H/19-F, 1-H/13-C and 1-H/31-P Transmit and Receive body coils along with dedicated receive only surface coils for rodent use (Molecules2Man, M2M Imaging Corp., Cleveland, OH. An arterial spin labeling coil was also purchased for both mice and rat.  Turnkey animal holders are included. Other existing RF coils include 1H birdcage (4cm ID) and surface coils (2cm). There is also a transmission line design TEM volume coil (4cm ID). The birdcage and TEM coils are suitable for either whole body mouse and/or rat brain studies.

The 9.4T is configured as a dual channel system, and is equipped with two 300W solid state amplifiers for frequencies above 200MHz, and two 1kW broad0band RF amplifiers for frequencies below 200MHz.

Support instrumentation include SA instruments complete physiological monitoring and gating system, along with facilities for mechanical ventilation, temperature maintenance and fluid support.