Benchmarking the performance of a low-cost Magnetic Resonance Control System at multiple sites in the open MaRCoS community

TL;DR

This paper evaluates the capabilities of an open-source, low-cost MRI system across multiple sites, demonstrating its ability to produce quality images at low magnetic fields and encouraging community collaboration.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive benchmark of the MaRCoS open-source MRI platform across different setups and demonstrates its potential for low-cost, flexible imaging.

Findings

Good quality images obtained from phantom and in vivo studies

Multiple low-field setups successfully used with MaRCoS system

Open-source platform can implement common clinical sequences

Abstract

Purpose: To describe the current properties and capabilities of an open-source hardware and software package that is being developed by many sites internationally with the aim of providing an inexpensive yet flexible platform for low-cost MRI. Methods: This paper describes three different setups from 50 to 360 mT in different settings, all of which used the MaRCoS console for acquiring data, and different types of software interfaces (custom-built GUI or PulSeq overlay) to acquire the data. Results: Images are presented from both phantoms and in vivo from healthy volunteers to demonstrate the image quality that can be obtained from the MaRCoS hardware/software interfaced to different low-field magnets. Conclusions: The results presented here show that a number of different sequences commonly used in the clinic can be programmed into an open-source system relatively quickly and easily, and can produce good quality images even at this early stage of development. Both the hardware and software will continue to develop, and it is an aim of this paper to encourage other groups to join this international consortium.