By Tim Bonfield
The Cincinnati Enquirer

A 19-ton magnet to be used in a powerful new scanner is delivered to the University of Cincinnati's College of Medicine Medical Services building Wednesday. (Gary Landers photo) | ZOOM |

It's a giant metal doughnut filled with about 31 miles of coiled wire and supercooled with liquid helium.

It's a magnet so powerful it will help University of Cincinnati researchers detect tiny chemical imbalances in the brain, analyze microscopic structural defects, even "map" how the brain processes thoughts and emotions.

It's the guts of a $10 million Center for Imaging Research that officials predict will make UC an internationally competitive force in the field of brain research.

And it arrived Wednesday with the help of a truck, a crane, and a crew of hard hats wielding steel plates and floor-supporting joists.

The delivery of the magnet caps UC's three-year effort to acquire one of the most powerful research MRI scanners in North America. Only about a dozen devices are as powerful as the 4-tesla device made by Varian Inc.; only a few are more powerful.

"This system will serve as a core facility for researchers throughout the College of Medicine. This will help make UC internationally competitive in imaging research," said Dr. Stephen Strakowski, director of the new Center for Imaging Research.

The new MRI machine is about 2.5 times more powerful that the typical 1.5-tesla MRI devices used at area hospitals and diagnostic `centers.

A tesla is a unit of magnetic field intensity. Four teslas is about 80,000 times stronger than the Earth's magnetic field. The unit was named after Nikola Tesla, an inventor from the late 1800s and early 1900s who is credited with numerous discoveries including alternating current generators and patented designs for fluorescent lights and wireless communication systems.

The magnet works much like an extremely sensitive radio receiver, Dr. Strakowski said. The stronger the magnet, the more precise the images can be.

The device can "see" soft structures in tissue as the magnetic field passes through the body. Meanwhile, different chemicals placed within the magnetic field will resonate at specific frequencies depending on their atomic structure.

That means the device can "map" emotions and thoughts by measuring the concentrations of various chemicals in the brain as a person conducts a task.

"You can ask a person to imagine a sad or happy moment and see which parts of the brain light up," Dr. Strakowski said.

By comparing the brain scans of healthy people against people with known illnesses, researchers hope to gain new understanding of numerous medical conditions including depression, bipolar disorder, Alzheimer's disease, epilepsy and stroke.

The scans may reveal new targets for medications to either block or enhance activity in a certain area of the brain. And during clinical trials, the scans could be used to measure how the brain is affected by taking a medication.

"These new high-field scanners can give us visible proof that a medication is acting on brain cells," Dr. Strakowski.

Similar studies have been conducted with weaker MRI devices, but the stronger MRI is capable of distinguishing between dozens more chemicals.

"It's like being able to get a clear signal when tuning between different radio stations when they are really close to each other on the dial," he said.

While the initial plans call for using the device primarily for brain studies, the MRI also can be used to make detailed images of the heart, joints, the gastrointestinal tract and other organ systems.

The device cost about $3 million. Renovating part of the medical sciences building to house it cost another $2 million. Officials predict running the MRI for five years will cost about $5 million.

The device is scheduled to be up and running by January. After that, UC researchers can start applying for research grants from government and private industry that will help pay for the machine.

Installing the new device also is expected to attract more researchers interested in neuroscience. In fact, UC already has recruited one expert - Dr. Jing-Huei Lee, an MRI physicist who previously worked at Brookhaven National Laboratory, who will serve as associate director and senior physicist at UC's imaging center.

UC is trying to double the number of medical researchers on campus as part of its Millennium Plan.

About a dozen other medical centers have 4-tesla MRI systems, said Kari Autio, a Varian representative involved in the UC installation. Among them: Brookhaven National Lab, Harvard's McLean Hospital, Duke University, and Wayne State University in Detroit.

A few have even larger systems. The University of Minnesota has a 7-tesla device. Ohio State University has an 8-tesla device. And the University of Chicago is developing a 9.4-tesla system, Mr. Autio said.

E-mail tbonfield@enquirer.com

Related stories:
System requires strong floors