Philips unveiled the next generation of its MRI scanner, with sealed magnets that do not need to be recharged with liquid helium coolant.
The company’s fully enclosed BlueSeal line was first introduced in 2018. The scanners only require 7 liters of helium during their manufacture, while previous imaging hardware—which would slowly release the gas into the atmosphere—may need as much as 1,500 liters over their lifetime.
That makes the healthcare industry the world’s largest buyer of helium, claiming around 30% of the total. Previously, Philips has estimated that about 50,000 helium-cooled MRI scanners are in use worldwide.
The company’s latest BlueSeal scanner is built around a wide, 70-centimeter bore and also integrates artificial intelligence tools to help automate the system’s workflow, improve image quality and reduce scanning times.
In addition, Philips said that sealing operations allows for a more compact design; the company claimed the 1.5 Tesla, 70-cm scanner was the lightest of its type, shedding up to 1,700 kilograms.
And with no need for helium ventilation pipes and infrastructure—even in the case of emergency shutdowns—the system can be installed in a greater variety of locations, including elevated floors.
“Philips invented helium-free operations in MRI, and since its launch in 2018, we have installed more than 1,500 BlueSeal systems globally in wide-ranging settings including the world’s first helium-free mobile MRI units,” Philips’ global MRI business leader, Ioannis Panagiotelis, said in a statement. The company estimates that its scanners have saved nearly 2.75 million liters to date.
“With AI applications seamlessly integrated into our latest 1.5T BlueSeal scanner, we have now applied AI to every aspect of the MRI workflow—from patient set-up and high-resolution image capture to quantitative data extraction, advanced diagnostics and reporting,” Panagiotelis added.
Philips said it plans to demonstrate the scanner at the annual meeting of Radiological Society of North America, which is being held in Chicago early next month.