Main magnet and scanner electronics
Our main resource consists of a 9.4 Tesla MRI scanner for MR imaging and spectroscopy applications.
Scanner specs
- Bruker Biospec 94/30 USR magnet with Avance Neo electronics
- Actively shielded magnet with a field strength of 9.4 Tesla at magnet isocentre
- 4 receiver channels and parallel imaging capabilities
- 2 interchangeable gradient coils
- Fixed gradient set BGA20: Inner diameter = 20 cm, max gradient = 300 mT/m
- Medium gradient insert BGA12S HP: inner diameter = 12 cm, max gradient = 668 mT/m
- Paravision 360 v3.3 scan software
Cryoprobe and RF coils
We are well equipped with a variety of radiofrequency (RF) coils that are necessary to produce and detect the MRI signal. In particular, our two cryoprobe coils provide a gain in signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) by approximately a factor of three in mouse and rat brain applications, through the use of cryogenic helium cooling of the apparatus.
Available coils
Phased array receive surface coils:
- Rat brain cryoprobe (4 elements)
- Mouse brain cryoprobe (4 elements)
- Rat brain phased array (4 elements)
- Mouse brain phased array (4 elements)
Volume resonators (transmit-receive birdcage coils)
- 72 mm inner-diameter
- 83 mm inner-diameter (active decoupling for use with receive-only coils)
- 173 mm inner-diameter (usable only with BGA20 large gradient coil)
If necessary, we also have the capability of producing single-element RF coils to fit the specific needs of a MRI study.
Animal Support and Infrastructure
The facility is housed in the Centre for Comparative Medicine, with rapid and direct access to animal housing, procedure rooms, and other preclinical imaging equipment (including a PET/CT/SPECT machine). Two animal preparation rooms adjacent to the scanner are designed to minimize cross-exposure between small prey species (e.g. mouse and rat) and predator species (e.g. ferret).
Animal prep
- Biological safety cabinet/fume hood
- Isoflurane anesthetic equipment
- Surgical microscope
- Stereotaxic surgical frame for mice and rats
In-scan animal maintenance
The animal is usually maintained during the imaging experiment by heated circulating water and isoflurane anesthesia, with physiological monitoring available for temperature, respiration, pulse oximetry and ECG signal.
- Animal scanning platforms with integrated circulating heated water pads and anesthetic gas delivery
- Motorized gantry for loading animal into scanner bore
- Physiological monitoring system with combined readout of two temperature probes (thermocouple and fibre optic), respiration and ECG
- Pulse oximeter
- In-bore video camera
- Automated gas mixer and CO2 capnograph
Technical Support
A wide array of technical support infrastructure is available to support the acquisition and processing of data:
- RF workshop for design and fabrication of RF coils
- 3D CAD and printing services of custom scan apparatus (in-house and through UBC Physics Machine Shop)
- In-house data processing server, augmented by access to high performance computing from UBC ARC and the Digital Research Alliance of Canada