News Brief
India Advances Towards Self-Reliance With Development Of Indigenous MRI Technology, Trials Set To Begin At AIIMS Delhi In October
Sameer MRI
India has developed its first indigenously manufactured MRI machine, which is set to be installed at AIIMS Delhi by October for trial runs, news agency ANI reported.
This initiative is aimed to cut treatment costs and decrease dependence on foreign medical devices, with 80-85 per cent of current equipment being imported.
This MRI machine represents a step towards enhancing India's self-reliance in medical technology.
On Tuesday (25 March), an agreement was also signed between AIIMS and the Society for Applied Microwave Electronics Engineering and Research (SAMEER), an autonomous R&D lab in Mumbai under the Ministry of Electronics, for the installation of the 1.5 Tesla MRI scanner.
SAMEER is the implementing agency for the Centre's Indigenous Magnetic Resonance Imaging (IMRI) – A National Mission.
The Mumbai-based lab is collaborating with C-DAC (Trivandrum), C-DAC (Kolkata), IUAC (New Delhi), DSI-MIRC (Bangalore) with the objective to design, develop and test an indigenous 1.5 Tesla MRI system for medical imaging.
Further, animal trials of the system has been concluded.
The ministry added that the development of the indigenous 1.5 Tesla magnet, which includes superconducting components, a quench protection system, helium cryostat, Magnet Ramping Unit, Emergency Run Down Unit, fast Data Acquisition Unit, and other control electronics, has also been completed, and the magnet has been ramped up to 1.5 Tesla.
Final cryotesting is currently underway, and the system will soon be integrated with the rest of the indigenous hardware and software, the ministry said.
"Through an EoI process, 7 companies have been engaged to take developments further. At this juncture, the MoU with AIIMS will facilitate conducting clinical validation and serves as catalyst in India’s journey of becoming self-reliant in MRI technologies," the ministry said.
