Mar. 23, 2001 There's a bargain in the basement of Stanford's
Packard Electrical Engineering building: a low-cost magnetic
resonance imaging (MRI) scanner. MRI scanners take sharp inner
pictures of the body including the brain, spine and joints. MRI
images provide better contrast in soft tissue like the brain
compared with other imaging techniques such as X-ray, CT or
ultrasound. But MRI scanners don't come cheap. One whole-body
scanner costs $1 million to $3 million, and scan charges can
exceed $1,000. "Personally, I never liked the cost of MRI. I'm
very frugal," says Steven Conolly, a senior research associate
on the engineering team creating the new MRI scanner. Professor
emeritus of engineering and radiology Albert Macovski inspired
the project, which is led by Conolly and engineering research
associate Greig Scott. One of the team's goals is to create a
high-quality scanner that would sell for about $150,000. The
scanner might become useful in the developing world, says
Conolly, or as a tool for basic sc