MRI research centre set up at York University

Hyperpolarisation with parahydrogen is a technique developed at York University that can, it is claimed, dramatically increase the sensitivity of MRI, the scanning technology widely used in hospitals.

It is hoped that hyperpolarisation will eventually be used to help doctors make diagnoses in minutes that currently take days and tailor treatments more accurately to the needs of individual patients.

The research team, led by Prof Simon Duckett and Prof Gary Green of the departments of chemistry and psychology respectively, has secured a £4.36m grant from the Wellcome Trust and Wolfson Foundation, as well as financial support from industrial partners and the university, to build the York Centre for Hyperpolarisation in Magnetic Resonance Imaging.

Duckett said: ‘Although MRI is already an incredibly useful technique, its sensitivity is, in fact, very low, rather like finding a needle in a haystack, which makes it difficult to detect the early stages of disease. It can also be very slow, limiting the way MRI is used in clinical settings.’