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A comment on FDA clears ‘world’s first’ portable, low-cost MRI. Parent comment

Re:FDA clears ‘world’s first’ portable, low-cost MRI by catblast on Sunday February 16, 2020 @12:00AM (#22339880)
An MRI magnet doesn’t produce heat while producing a magnetic field. That’s not why they are cooled. They are superconductors, the resistance is 0.
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Re:FDA clears ‘world’s first’ portable, low-cost MRI by duskwuff on Sunday February 16, 2020 @12:40AM (#22339990)
> They are superconductors, the resistance is 0.

So long as they stay under their critical temperature. If that changes… well, a lot of liquid helium is about to stop being liquid.

And that's one of the reasons why a permanent-magnet MRI is so interesting -- it doesn't depend on a constant supply of power (for the helium cooler) and gaseous helium (to replace lost gas), so the system is portable, and maintenance costs are likely to be much lower.

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