https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/sickaroundtheworld/...
The machines themselves are not magically cheaper in Japan; they're just being paid for through some other route. If the scanner were somehow free (gov't grant?), 98$ seems pretty reasonable for the labor.
They’re also “free” (at the point of service) in the UK, but the scanner and helium are not a generous gift from the fey folk, nor does the Queen volunteer as a tech.
These things cost money. Any study you do is going to have to cover expenses—-including their share of a temperamental, multimillion dollar machine (or find a way to dip into the same accounts that cover its clinical use).
The $550/hr you are paying may be because you are using a particularly fancy scanner, or because utilisation rate is low, or because the amount is loaded with overheads, or w/e.
That’s in the ballpark for a 1.5T, but those are fairly old. About $1M per Tesla used to be a decent rule of thumb, but it’s come down a little at the low end. Still, I would be amazed to see a 3T for anything below $2M.
As for the $550/hr, it’s probably true that research scanners have lower utilization and higher costs to support all the weird stuff researchers want to do. An outpatient clinic specializing in knees can run much leaner. That said, that rate seems to be pretty standard across universities and I maintain that it's a very reasonable estimate of the cost. For example:
* Hopkins $668/hr (3T) or $538 (1.5T) during prime time; cheaper nights and weekend http://www.mri.jhu.edu/div_mri_res/ServCentPolicyFY17.pdf
* Yale: $539/hr (3T) https://medicine.yale.edu/mrrc/users/charges.aspx
* Harvard/MGH: $640/hr https://www.nmr.mgh.harvard.edu/core
* WUSTL: $710/hr (3T) https://www.mir.wustl.edu/Portals/0/Documents/Uploads/CCIR/F...
* McGill: $500/hr (3T) or $500-700/hr (7T) https://mcgill.ca/bic/files/bic/bic-rates-03052018.pdf
Most of these do not include F&A. It’s already coming out of the grants and external users pay a "Dean's Tax" on top of that to cover the missing overhead (which can often double the price).
“Because it’s too expensive,” seems like a great opportunity for some clever startup to figure out a way to make it less expensive. Computers used to take up entire rooms. Flying across the country used to be insanely expensive. Cell phones used to cost a ton of money per minute. Reducing the cost of scanning, or developing entirely new scanning tech isn’t science fiction, it’s the future.