The MRI industry is gearing up for another major technological revolution with the introduction of portable MRI units. Two teams of researchers at Princeton and Germany/California/New York have figured out ways to make the systems much more compact and affordable. Using these devices, healthcare professionals can routinely study objects in their natural environment and get them to work in industrial processing, materials and earth sciences, and a wider range of medical diagnostics.

Moreover, MRIs' unique ability to image both anatomically and functionally is finding the technology new applications in surgical planning and navigation as well as in diffusion and perfusion imaging.

"MRI equipment's indispensability as a diagnostic aid notwithstanding, the number of installed units in developing Asian countries is still low," notes Ms. Prabakar. "This could be attributed to the financial uncertainty in the region, which has significantly weakened the local currencies and therefore, limited the purchasing power of end users."

Meanwhile, this situation offers industry participants an enormous potential to tap into the huge customer base. They have to leverage MRI's growing status as the preferred diagnostic imaging method for imaging the central nervous system, particularly for detecting brain tumours, spine lesions, imaging blood vessels, and stroke affected areas of brain.

With technology developers exploring many new applications, especially those involving cardiac and neuroimaging, it is inevitable that MRI would evolve into a highly sophisticated medical imaging tool. Some of the improvements made to the technology have further enhanced the modality and many applications have adopted these systems.

Emerging Technologies in MRI is part of the Technical Insights, Healthcare vertical subscription service. It covers technologies such as MRI magnets, magnetic gradient coil, radio frequency (RF) systems, MRI scanners, and MRI software. It provides technology challenges, drivers, and restraints as well as assesses innovations and opportunities in North America, Europe and the Asia Pacific. The research service enables companies to align their positioning strategies to benefit from these emerging technologies. Executive summaries and analyst interviews are available to the press.

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