After a very long wait that spanned two prefabricated buildings - we weren't supposed to call them trailers, some sort of negative connotation - the
Henry H. Wheeler, Jr. Brain Imaging Center took its first step into a permanent home yesterday with the move of the BIC's existing 3 T Siemens Trio scanner into one of the magnet bays in
Li Ka Shing Center for Biomedical and Health Sciences (LKS). With space for two 3 T MRIs, a 7 T MRI, a MEG and a host of functional support facilities, including TMS and EEG prep rooms as well as mechanical and electrical workshops, there will be quite a lot of moving in to be done over the years ahead. For the time being, however, the task is to get the very busy Trio back up and scanning as quickly as possible. Here are a few pictorial and video highlights of the magnet move, with a couple of interesting and hopefully educational features indicated.
The magnet had been ramped down a week before, allowing a lot of preparatory work disconnecting cables and getting access to the removable roof section above the scanner's old home. In this photo you can see the copper foil of the removable roof section, a component of the scanner's Faraday shield (to reject
external RF):
The removable roof section was lifted out by crane:
Then the magnet, weighing some 32,000 lbs with the patient table sled attached and the cryostat full of liquid helium, was lifted out and staged in an adjacent parking lot:
