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The Focused Ultrasound Laboratory is located in the Longwood Medical Research Center (LMRC) of the Brigham and Women's Hopital. The MRI Research Division of the Department of Radiology occupies approximately 7900 square feet of office space on the ground floor of the LMRC. This facility consists of offices for research staff, multiple laboratories, an electronics shop, conference room, and three areas for the research magnets and consoles.
The Focused Ultrasound Sugery Laboratry supports a breadth of research staff, including post-doctoral and doctoral research scientists, visiting scientists, graduate engineering and biology students, and full-time engineers with background in electrical/electronics engineering, mechanical engineering, biomedical engineering, acoustics, and biology disciplines. Facilities are availabe for development and study of all aspects of Focused Ultrasound research.
The Focused Ultrasound Laboratory conducts MR research at dedicated research facilities located in the LMRC and in the Brigham and Women's Hospital proper.
The laboratory maintains dedicated driving equipment, an on-line workstation and monitoring equipment at the hospital's main MRI bay. This main facility incorporates a GE SIGNA 1.5T imaging system, large magnet room, seperate equipment room with a shielded feed-through connection for electrical signals, and high-end console and computing facilites. On-line monitoring is available between the imaging console, driving system, monitoring equipment and workstation. This installation provides a platform for both research and clinical trials.
Signifigant research at the laboratory is directed to developing and perfecting MR-compatible equipment for use in both research and clinical environments. Focus on transducer design, MR-compatible driving hardware, and positioning systems integrated with MR imaging protocol are design elements evaluated in experimental and clinical trails. Multiple custom-built MR-compatible 3-axis transducer positioning systems are available for MR research and clinical trials.
The Focused Ultrasound Laboratory is well equipped with all equipment necessary for ultrasound transducer and phased array construction, tuning and characterization.
More about therapeutic ultrasound transducer fabrication facilities.
A 1024 channel ultrasound driving system developed at the laboratory is comprised of high efficiency switching amplifiers incorporating independent power control and phase control (via power feedback and phase feedback). The system provides a scalable driving network for phased array transducers.
The laboratory currently has multiple computerized high resolution positioning systems with integrated data acquisition equipment for acoustic characterization.
In addition to specially designed systems for FUS research, most of the basic equipment required for ultrasound laboratory experiments (including RF-amplifiers, frequency generators, oscilloscopes, voltmeters, hydrophones, transducers--both focused and planar--and a degasser) are available in the laboratory.
The Focused Ultrasound Laboratory and MRI research division maintain high-end equipment for both electronics and MR development. High-end electronics equipment available includes: 4-channel digital oscilloscopes, a network analyzer, multiple pc-based data acquisition systems, pc-based frequency and signal generators, Wavetek arbitrary waveform generators, and other equipment. An advanced electronics shop with the consultation of a full-time engineer is available to the MRI research division.
The Focused Ultrasound Laboratory and MRI research division maintain machining equipment for fabrication of most necessary research equipment and fixtures. Major equipment includes: diamond-wire saw, CNC micro-router, lathe, band saw, table saw, and drill press.
The MR Research Division at present has three superconducting NMR systems available for research - a 1.5 T SIGNA system, a 1.5 T IBM/MIT 60 cm bore system, and a 4.7 T 24 cm bore system. All three systems are committed to research and there is no clinical demand for these systems. The 1.5T IBM/MIT (60cm) system has a console and spectrometer built by SMIS Limited, Surrey, England. The 4.7 T system is a commercial Omega system supplied by General Electric. The Omega system has GE's Acustar shielded gradient coils which can switch in 100 us and achieve field gradients of up to 7 G/cm and uses a SUN 3/160 computer for control, processing and display. All computers are connected to the Radiology Department's network via ethernet.
The LMRC has its own electronics shop comprising approximately 300 square feet. This shop contains a considerable variety of electronic components and test equipment that are used to not only troubleshoot and repair components, but also to build customized equipment as needed. Circuit simulation and schematic design software are available on workstations. Major equipment includes: HP oscilloscopes, impedance and network analyzers, Wavetek signal generator, high voltage fixed and variable capacitors, and a mobile tuning cart comprised of: signal generator, oscilloscope, frequency counter, marker generator, broad and narrow band preamplifiers.
The Harvard Medical School/Campus Services Machine Shop is a Core Facility with two full-time machinists, expert in the design and construction of custom research tools and repair of laboratory instruments. Design services take advantage of 2-D CAD computer drawing and 3-D surface rendering programs to quickly transform rough concepts into full blueprints and concrete items. Drawing time is minimal. Discussions on sketches reduces the amount of work given to the machinist. The HMS/Campus Services Machine Shop features construction of custom instruments where off-the-shelf tools are unavailable for investigatory work in the newest technologies. Problems can be viewed on the lab bench, in process. Prototype development can be highly interactive. Production orders are outsourced to other machine shops and complete management of outsourced work is provided. This allows focus on essential on-site services.
The Radiology Department also maintains its own machine shop for general users and contains a lathe, milling machine, grinding machine, drill press, band saw, and a large supply of materials.
The Harvard University Laboratories maintains a master glassblower and a fully equipped glassblowing shop. Almost all research glassware can be constructed on the premises. In addition, a major scientific glassblowing company, Wilbur Scientific Co., Inc, is located on the campus of Northeastern University (less than a mile from BWH) and provides expert scientific glassblowing and advice at $50/hr to investigators at Harvard Medical School.