Smaller, lighter, cheaper: A serial entrepreneur wants his portable MRI to transform medicine
GUILFORD, Conn. — In a nondescript building in this seaside town sits a prototype that could change the way that doctors use magnetic resonance imaging.
Usually an MRI machine requires a giant, powerful magnet and must be encased in its own copper-shielded room. It is why the behemoths cost hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars. But this device, from a startup called Hyperfine, is about the size of a luggage cart. It could be wheeled from one bed to another.
On a recent day, I lay down and put my head under the machine. Within minutes a three-dimensional image of my brain was on a screen in an adjoining room — not quite as good as a normal MRI, but pretty clear. There was no need for me to take off ordinary metal objects. I wore my belt.
