FDA Clears New Magnetic Resonance Imager

Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Called Altaire, the system is the product of Hitachi Medical Systems (Tokyo, Japan).

Altaire's advanced imaging capabilities include single-shot and diffusion-weighted EPI, radiofrequency (RF) fat saturation, and very short TEs and FSE with short inter-echo times. Inside the gantry, the environment has been designed to be spacious and comfortable to reduce patient anxiety and claustrophobia. The passively shielded design contains the 5 Gauss magnetic fringe field within an 18 by 22 foot scan room, reducing the time and cost to prepare a site. Since the room itself does not have to be magnetically shielded, windows and skylights can be used to accentuate the open environment.

"Every subsystem has been optimized to work in concert with all other subsystems to achieve high-field performance while maintaining cost-effectiveness,” said Sheldon Schaffer, vice president and general manager of Magnetic Resonance.