Summary: GE HealthCare, UC, UC Health, and Cincinnati Children’s are collaborating to create an MRI R&D center on UC’s medical campus, aiming to advance MRI technology and enhance clinical applications.
Key Takeaways:
- GE HealthCare will receive a JobsOhio R&D grant to support job growth and new roles at its Ohio facilities.
- The collaboration will leverage the latest MRI technologies, including the SIGNA Premier scanner, to improve precision and personalization in MRI exams.
GE HealthCare, University of Cincinnati (UC), UC Health, and Cincinnati Children’s are establishing a new collaboration to accelerate MRI innovation. The collaboration intends to create a co-located MRI Research and Development (R&D) center on UC’s medical campus to foster interaction between clinical investigators and GE HealthCare scientists.
JobsOhio R&D Grant
As part of this academic-industrial collaboration, GE HealthCare will receive assistance in the form of an R&D grant from JobsOhio to support engineering and manufacturing job growth at its Aurora, Ohio, MRI coils facility, as well as new clinical and scientific roles at the Cincinnati R&D center of excellence facility.
Collaborative Expertise
“We are excited to launch a collaboration with our partners at UC, UC Health, and Cincinnati Children’s to bring technical knowledge from our GE HealthCare MR Applied Science Lab team together in the field with clinical expertise from these renowned health institutions to develop MRI methods for the next era of healthcare,” said Anja Brau, Ph.D., general manager of MR Clinical Solutions and Research Collaborations at GE HealthCare. “We find this model of ‘real world’ collaboration effective to leverage collective strengths of industry and academia and accelerate the translation from prototype to clinical reality.”
The collaboration would build upon GE HealthCare’s presence in Ohio, including its MRI RF coil R&D and manufacturing facility in Aurora.
Studies are intended to be conducted at the research facility that would help to develop and validate next-generation MRI technology with the goal of increasing accessibility and productivity of MRI scanners and increasing precision and personalization of MRI exams. Many of the projects would build upon AIR Coil technology designed and manufactured in Ohio.
Impact on Community
“We are excited to embark on a new research collaboration with GE HealthCare,” said Mary Mahoney, MD, Ben Felson chair and professor in the University of Cincinnati Department of Radiology at the College of Medicine and chief of imaging services at UC Health.
“Together, we could make a profound impact on our medical center, our community and most importantly, our patients. Through our collective efforts, we would be able to push the boundaries of knowledge, discover innovative solutions, and improve the lives of those we serve. The University of Cincinnati and UC Health fully embrace this opportunity to advance imaging science and help develop and build the workforce of technologists, engineers, and scientists in health imaging for Ohio,” Mahoney adds.
The research center on the UC campus would house GE HealthCare’s most powerful 3.0T wide-bore MRI scanner, the SIGNA Premier. This MRI platform features GE HealthCare’s innovative hardware technologies, including AIR Coils, and its latest AI software technologies, such as AIR Recon DL and Sonic DL deep-learning reconstruction applications, which can improve image quality and scan times. The scanner’s suite of imaging capabilities has led to its adoption by many academic sites for imaging studies spanning neurology, oncology, cardiovascular, and musculoskeletal applications in both adult and pediatric populations.