MRI Facilities & Equipment

Scanning Facilities: Siemens 3 Tesla Prisma Fit MRI Scanner equipped with 20, 32 and 64 channel head coils. High speed image reconstruction is facilitated by an additional GPU computing system.

Peripherals: Siemens headphone/speak system, Siemens physiological measurement system which includes pulse, respiration and EKG. Resonance Technology Corporation (RTC) Visuastim digital system which includes goggles/headphone/controller unit. Optoacoustics noise cancellation headphones and microphone. BOLD Screen 24 LCD for visual stimulus presentation. Current Design 4-button and 2-button response pad and a 32 channel electronic interface and power supply unit. BioPac MP150 for collecting physiological measures including skin conductance, respiration rate, and pulse rate/waveform.

Computing: Dedicated MacIntosh computer running E-Prime, Psychtoolbox, PsychoPy and dual-boot with a Windows partition. Contact the MR Technician to install new software.

Sequences: Standard Siemens sequences include: anatomical, functional (BOLD and arterial spin labeling), diffusion-weighted, arterial spin labelling, spectroscopic imaging. Special sequences include slice-interleaved multiband for higher scanning rates. New sequence installation and materials transfer agreements may be arranged by contacting Jared Gilbert or Mark Cohen.

A daily long-term stability test is performed on the scanner to ensure that the scanner is within manufacturer specifications. This is comprised of a fifteen minute long 5 slice echo-planar sequence with a TR of 1second. A 45° flip angle is used instead of siemens specified default flip angle as this increases sensitivity to fluctuations in the RF power amplifier. Studies are not performed unless the signal stability, after first order linear drift correction, has peak to signal fluctuations of less than 0.4%.

Simulator: An MRI simulator that gives subjects an experience similar to live scanning is available.

Testing Facility: A dedicated private room for screening, pre-testing, interviews.

Electronics & Machine Shop: Facilities for fabrication of specialized devices required by the users, such as radio receiver coils, stimulation and response devices, holders and stabilizers for subjects.

Neurophysiology Testing Suite: Two fully shielded EEG suites and prep room. One houses a Bio-Semi 64 channel EEG system using active electrodes. The second houses a NeuroPhilips GES400 MR-compatible system, with sampling capacity up to 1000Hz, and both 256-electrode and 128-electrode, high impedance HydroGel Geodesic Sensor Nets. The system is configured for collection of additional peripheral signals including breathing rate, galvanic skin response and pulse. If you would like to disucss using our EEG systems, please contract Dr. Lenartowicz.

Low Frequency Focused Ultrasound: The Staglin Center houses a state of the art Brainsonix Pulsar BX 1002 low intensity focused ultrasound (LIFU) system. The system operates on a fundamental frequency of 650kHz and is equipped with three transducers focusing at different depths: 55mm, 65mm, 80mm. Documentation for this system can be found here. If you would like to discuss how to use this system in your work, please contact Dr. Martin Monti