The funny thing about this is, that technologically an MRI is much simpler compared to an ultrasonic imager:<p>- Field coil
- Gradient coils + coil driver
- RF transceiver (essentially n SDR)<p>The single most expensive part is the cryostat for the field coil. If there were high temperature superconductors that would retain their properties within strong magnetic fields you could build and operate MRI scanners much cheaper.<p>A few years ago I did build a very crude and simplistic MRI scanner in my shack; it had a piss poor resolution of about 10mm³ took &quot;ages&quot; to scan a single plane and would dissipate huge amounts of heat in the (normal conducting) field coil; the gradient coils were driven by a regular HiFi audio amplifier. But it is definitely possible to build such a thing DIY and have it produce images (of poor quality).