With much fanfare and anticipation, the NYU Center for Biomedical Imaging (affectionately known as CBI), located at 660 First Avenue and 38th Street (Fig. 1), opened its doors for clinical and research studies in December 2004. The center boasts a Siemens 64 slice CT scanner, two Siemens 3T Trio magnets, one with Total Imaging Matrix (TIM®) technology (the first TIM 3T in the United States), and most excitingly, a Siemens 7T whole-body magnet, presently placing us in an elite group of only four research centers in the United States with such high field strength imaging capabilities.
Joseph A. Helpern, Ph.D, Director of the CBI and Professor of Radiology, is a renowned expert in high field strength MR. He joined NYU from the Nathan Kline Institute where he held the title of Chief of Medical Physics and was the founding Director of the Center for Advanced Brain Imaging. “I believe in fostering a strong academic research environment by empowering our faculty with the best resources available. We are truly fortunate to have the opportunity to be part of this exciting research program. There are very few imaging research centers in the world with access to the kind of equipment we have, and to have such a supportive relationship with a major vendor such as Siemens.”
Fig. 1: The CBI entrance.
Fig. 2: (a) Kiwi – the real thing; (b) 7 Tesla T2 weighted image of a kiwi. Observe the mouthwatering anatomy.
The CBI’s ‘big magnet’ has earned the moniker Zeus. Installation, shielding, and shimming have been major projects (see Radiata Vol. I). Zeus began producing images in March of 2005. As we go to press our only study subjects have been volunteers from the corner grocery on Second Avenue (Fig. 2).