I don’t get it - the 11T image has vastly more information than 3T image. Are you saying all that extra information is not helpful when trying to detect tiny tumors or clots?
I can do thin slices on a 3T just fine. They don’t usually help, with the standard 3mm providing plenty enough information. We do the odd scan that is 0.5mm slices.
If I show a lesion that’s <1mm, will anyone do anything about it? Watchful waiting seems likely.
The question is ‘do thinner slices improve diagnostic accuracy?’ I’m sure they do… to a point.
A monster of a machine like this will be research based and being doing dti etc at extreme resolution. Not that helpful clinically, very useful to the researchers.
Getting more people scanned is much more of a problem than getting more scanning on the same cohort.
Not OP, but I am a radiologist, and that 3T image is not representative of a state-of-the-art clinical scanner. The 11.7T does have extremely high spatial resolution but contrast resolution is compromised.
As others have said the clinical utility of >3T is very dubious, and most real world MR advances in the last 5 years have been AI (DL/ML not generative) reconstruction for lower field strengths.
That high a field strength has significant safety concerns, particularly for implants and pacemakers etc.
The safety aspect you point to is just so painful.
I was looking at a 5T scanner from United Imaging (interesting stories there…). Is there a single implant that’s been tested for these novel magnets? Checking out implants is painful enough at 1.5T and 3T.
I think they are saying that even with much better MRIs the limiting factor is finding a radiologist to interpret the image, and the costs of treatment.
I’ve never had a problem finding a radiologist in US and my insurance covered something like 80% of my last MRI. I think I paid ~$300 for it. I would gladly pay double that for a more reliable detection.
I wonder how much the resolution would increase if we went from 11T to say 50T?