Current and Future MRI Systems

Current MRI technology is reviewed, with emphasis on the challenges and limitations of the major hardware components. In many respects most of these subsystems are fairly mature and the technology developments are of an incremental nature. An exception to this is technology related to receiver electronics and highly parallel coil arrays. An MRI scanner can be viewed somewhat analogously to a personal computer - the basic hardware has remained unchanged for a number of years (except for performance improvements), and the technology development is mainly concentrated in the sophisticated applications running on the hardware. Hence MRI technology growth is largely in the direction of improved applications for supporting solutions to healthcare problems. It is impossible to cover the application development field in a short talk, so here only the more hardware related technology developments are discussed