[andbberger]

we could do annual scans with current tech. the fundamental limitation of MRI is proton relaxation time, which limits the sampling rate. the path to reducing scan time and thus cost is to use a more sophisticated reconstruction method to reduce the number of required samples. this is being worked on.

i don't have any data here, but I am dubious that a room temperature superconductor will bring down the price of MRI machines. a room temp superconductor only saves you a dewar, about $50k of liquid helium and a cryocooler. you still have to build the rest of the MRI, which is an _extraordinarily_ sensitive instrument

> Fires, particularly house fires would become less common as wires simply stop conducting when they are overloaded.

depends how sharp the phase transition is.

[gibolt]

There is a lot of infrastructure around the MRI in order to support liquid helium storage, cycling, and inter-device pathways. It isn't just what you see in the room.

It might still be a large machine, but a bunch of bottlenecks disappear. With that, it is only a matter of time until a startup develops a much cheaper, smaller, and more efficient device.

[ttyprintk]

Philips is a big player making the assumption that the next generation of MRI will be smaller, cheaper, and more widely available. But, I can confirm smaller players are operating on that assumption as well.

[MauranKilom]

CMIIW but the main thing to make acquisition times more reasonable is higher magnetic field strength. Which, leaving all the technical questions of achieving it aside, comes with other fun constraints like requiring heavy shielding for the room and of course very careful control of what kinds of metallic objects can go near it...

[im3w1l]

It's my understanding that long-known high temperature superconductors already don't require helium cooling. How does that fact fit into the picture?