Completion and Commissioning of the Iseult whole-body 11.7 MRI Magnet

by Lionel Quettier

Wednesday 30 Oct 2019, 11:00 → 12:15 Europe/Zurich

30/7-018 - Kjell Johnsen Auditorium (CERN)

Neurospin is a neuroscience research center located in France at CEA Saclay and equipped with several MRI systems in operation since 2007. 

Iseult, an innovative whole-body 11.7 T MRI magnet, will be available very soon. It is an actively shielded magnet manufactured from NbTi superconductor, with a homogeneous field provided in a 90 cm warm bore. Iseult is operated in driven mode and it is cooled with a superfluid helium bath at 1.8K. The magnet was delivered to Neurospin in May 2017 and its connection with the cryoplant and with all the ancillary equipment was completed in October 2018. After 4 months of cooldown and 4 months of tests, on July 18th 2019 the Iseult magnet has successfully reached its nominal field of 11.72T.

The presentation will summarize the project history and the long road to obtain these performances, never obtained so far for with a giant MRI magnet. It will cover 15 years of work, from the preliminary designs studies, the R&D and prototyping activities, to the manufacturing of the magnet and the on-site cryogenic and electrical facilities preparation. It will then present the magnet commissioning, from the cooling phase to the step-by-step energization up to the nominal current. Finally, the talk will conclude with a summary of the remaining tasks prior to the production of the first images foreseen for 2020.

Iseult_CERN_301019.pdf