Tech Craft
Core Components
Unveiling the "Secret Energy Room" of MRI
Unveiling the "Secret Energy Room" of MRI
How powerful is the kinetic energy required to successfully run a large medical device weighing about 6 tons and generating about 60,000 times the Earth's gravitational magnetic field.
Dec 22, 2021
Dec 22, 2021
The "Engine" of Magnetic Resonance
Gradient Power Amplifier (GPA), like the engine of a rocket, is one of the most important key components and the most difficult part in the research and development of the MRI system. Our innovative GPA seems like just a box the size of a refrigerator, but it can output a huge number of energy, providing enough electricity for 8,000 1.5p air conditioners at the same time. It can support the fast switching of gradient magnetic, which influences the MRI scanning speed.
It is the "ceiling" that determines the overall performance limits of MRI, but GPA has a long R&D cycle, heavy investment and high risks, and there are fewer than five manufacturers worldwide that can independently develop megawatt-level high-power GPA.
A GPA consists of more than 30,000 components, and the functional modules have strong relationships to each other. The change in one component affects the whole machine. For example, the R&D team once found that a switching element tended to be triggered easily, so they had to make it thicker. That change of a few millimeters required the team to completely change the entire design. Without the benefit of existing R&D to draw from, they could only feel their way forward through exploration.
Road of Independent Research and Development of Core Components
Road of Independent Research and Development of Core Components
A GPA consists of more than 30,000 components, and the functional modules have strong relationships to each other. The change in one component affects the whole machine. For example, the R&D team once found that a switching element tended to be triggered easily, so they had to make it thicker. That change of a few millimeters required the team to completely change the entire design. Without the benefit of existing R&D to draw from, they could only feel their way forward through exploration.
In United Imaging Healthcare's MRI Lab in August 2017, thousands of volts and hundreds of amp passed through a huge electronic component, and thousands of fine electronic components were excited one by one, and finally they were placed outside the insulating glass. A complete waveform is displayed on the instrument-China's first self-developed and commercialized high-power gradient amplifier (GPA) was born, which marks that the last barrier to independent research and development of the core components of the magnetic resonance system has been broken. 100% independent research and development, which truly fills the domestic gap, and also directly promotes the overall performance of magnetic resonance products to reach the international advanced level, and some indicators are internationally leading.
To date, United Imaging Healthcare's self-developed core components such as GPA and RFPA have been applied in products such as uPMR 790 HD TOF PET/MR and 75cm ultra-wide bore 3T MR, which have been used and well received in several hundred top hospitals worldwide. This is the best testimony of our insist of independent Research and Development of Core Components.
