The Connectom.X is a dedicated research MRI system designed to probe brain microstructure beyond the limits of conventional clinical MRI. With gradients up to 500 mT/m and ultra-fast encoding, it enables cellular-scale diffusion measurements, ultra-high-resolution imaging, and quantitative microstructural biomarkers in vivo.
Gradient Amplitude
6-12× Clinical
Slew Rate
3-4× Clinical
Only Two Such Scanners Worldwide
Research-only platform, funded through an NIH High-End Instrumentation Award (S10OD034309) and available for collaborative research and protocol development
Connectom.X is the world’s best MRI scanner to sense cellular-level brain tissue properties. It has been optimized to measure the diffusion of water molecules, spreading over just a few micrometers and thereby probing the structure of neuronal cells and organelles. In this way, we become sensitive to tissue structure at the scales 100-1000 times smaller than what we nominally resolve with MRI (millimeters). This allows us to develop markers of brain pathology, aging and development in every imaging voxel, and create maps of objective tissue parameters.
The development, validation and clinical translation of cellular-scale parameters forms the rapidly growing field Tissue Microstructure Imaging. Specifically, we focus on the geometric parameters of neuronal cells (diameters of cell bodies, axons or dendrites; the degree of their beading; correlation length scales of their packing arrangement), as well as the fractions of water inside specific cell types and in extra-cellular space, and water exchange rate between cells and extra-cellular space.
The key to the remarkable sensitivity to cellular structure is the strong and fast magnetic field gradients, which help encode micrometer-scale displacements of water molecules, while they are randomly diffusing everywhere in the brain, each one sensing its own tiny microenvironment.
As compared to typical clinical scanners, Connectom.X gradients are about 6-12 times stronger and 3-4 times faster. Both these parameters ensure that we can achieve sensitivity to molecular displacements of just a few micrometers, probing the tiniest scales in the brain.
Researchers at the Center for Biomedical Imaging at NYU Langone Health develop transformative imaging technologies to advance basic science and address unsolved clinical problems.
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