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Abstract #2575

Design and Construction of a Halbach Array Magnet for Portable Brain MRI

Clarisa Zimmerman1, Lawrence L. Wald2, Matthew S. Rosen, James Blau3

1Electrical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, United States; 2Department of Radialogy, Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Massachusetts General Hospital, United States; 3Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, United States


A Halbach array magnet was designed, modeled and constructed for a portable brain MRI application. The array consists of 20 radially magnetized NdFeB N42 magnets and is large enough to fit the human head. The modeled field shows a roughly quadratic field profile with a central Larmor frequency sufficient for imaging (~3.3MHz). While the homogeneity is well below that of superconducting magnets, it fits well with our light-weight and portable concept if the inhomogeneities are used in image encoding.