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Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) is a non-ionizing, non-invasive imaging modality that has become key in modern medicine. Its high value resides in a broad range of soft tissue contrasts or biomarkers that can be tuned to enable the identification and follow-up of many pathophysiological or metabolic processes. Such developments were made possible thanks to almost forty years of hardware and software development, yet access to MRI nowadays remains exclusive, bound to radiology suites in hospitals, and restricted to less than half of the world population. This limited accessibility is mostly due to its one-fits-all design and its prerequisites for intense magnetic field strength that impact cost, siting infrastructure, and clinical compatibility. One way to improve accessibility in MRI is to lower the magnetic field strength that will naturally influence cost, siting, and compatibility. Further, lowering the field strength can translate in smaller footprint designs which geometry and contrast could purposely be tuned to certain targeted applications. Indeed, relaxation mechanisms are known to change with the surrounding magnetic field, with larger T1 dispersion at low field that have for the most part been unexplored.
Although very promising, many challenges arise linked to the lower intrinsic nuclear spin polarization inherent to low field technologies, calling for original and innovative approaches to reach clinical relevance. During this seminar, Prof. Najat Salameh will describe those challenges and possible solutions by presenting the current landscape of low field imaging and recent progress made at the Center for Adaptable MRI Technology, Basel University.