1.0 T vs 7 T – When Low Field is Better

By Silvio Aime, Ph.D. Head, NMR Laboratory, Department of Chemistry University of Turino, Italy

Compact MRI at 1 Tesla has many advantages over high-field superconducting MRI; in particular, a key imaging benefit is the increased sensitivity for gadolinium-based contrast imaging.

In a recent paper, “MRI of cells and mice at 1 and 7 Tesla with Gd‐targeting agents: when the low field is better!”  the researchers concluded that “for slowly moving Gd complexes, it is possible to obtain in vivo sensitivity enhancements at 1T several times higher than that attained at high fields.”

The reported results indicate that, for applications in which the paramagnetic agent is bound to a macromolecular system in slow‐moving conditions, a high‐resolution 1 T scanner is preferable to a high‐field one. The availability of low cost, easy-to-use 1T MRI scanners may markedly increase the number of biological groups that should come to consider in vivo MRI as a complementary or alternative tool to other imaging modalities.