Yasuhiko Terada1,
Kazunori Ishizawa1, Shinya Inamura1, Katsumi Kose1
1Institute
of Applied Physics, University of Tsukuba, Tsukuba, Ibaraki, Japan
A portable wrist MRI system for skeletal age assessment without special RF shielding was developed. The system consisted of a small 0.3 T permanent magnet of 135 kg weight, which is readily portable and can be placed anywhere. Despite the small magnet gap (8 cm), the B0 and B1 homogeneities and the gradient nonlinearity were high over 8 cm 8 cm 4 cm diameter ellipsoidal volume. The portable system provided wrist images with high quality that are as reliable as those provided by a compact hand MRI system with a 0.3 T permanent magnet of 700 kg weight.