Varian sells 4-T MR system for brain study

Varian announced that it is selling a very high field MR research system to McLean Hospital of Belmont, MA, the largest psychiatric teaching hospital for Harvard Medical School, for research into human brain function associated with drug abuse and psychiatric disorders.

Very high field (4-tesla) systems such as this one cost from $3 million to $4 million and are used only in research applications. In addition to its imaging capabilities, the Varian system can be used for in vivo nuclear MR spectroscopy, a technique for determining structural and functional relationships of chemical compounds in the brain.

Systems have also been ordered by the University of California, Berkeley; Emory University in Atlanta; and the National Institute for Environmental Studies in Tsukuba, Japan.