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Our facility

Bruker Pharmascan 70/16

A 7.0 Tesla small animal magnetic resonance (MR) scanner was installed at the Vivarium, University of Bergen, in December 2004.
This MR scanner can be used for non-invasive diagnostic studies on small laboratory animals (rats, mice, small fish).
Pathological as well as physiological processes can now be followed in a precise manner in the animal body, by utilizing a set of MR imaging techniques combining visualisation, diffusion, perfusion and spectroscopy sequences.

The MR machine is specifically suitable for performing longitudinal studies of disease development and possible effects of treatment strategies.

People

• Frits Thorsen, Associate Professor
  • Frits is MIC platform leader and responsible for funding and policy issues
  • Frits received his PhD at the Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology, University of Bergen, in 1998. He also did his postdoctoral work at the same institute. In the periods 1989-1995 and 2002-2004 he was working as a medical physicist at the Department of Oncology, Haukeland University Hospital. Since 2004 he has been working as an Associate Professor at the Department of Biomedicine. In addition, he is Scientific Project Manager in an FP6-funded research project; Angiotargeting, co-ordinated by the University of Bergen.

• Tina Pavlin, Chief Engineer
  • Tina is responsible for general management of the MR facility and MR applications
  • Tina received her PhD in atomic physics from California Institute of Technologi in 2003. From 2003-2005 she worked at Harvard University researching and developing novel magnetic resonance (MR) applications of laser polarized gases. She worked as a post-doc between 2005-2008 at the Department of Circulation and Medical Imaging and the MR center of NTNU. During this time she gained competence in MRI of small animals aimed at various biomedical applications. At MIC she is responsible for the daily running of the small animal MRI system at Vivarium, training, supporting and advising users, running courses as well as participating in scientific projects.

• Kai Gunter Brandt, Staff Engineer
  • Kai is responsible for technical issues concerning both MR software and hardware

Educational material

• General questions and answers on how to get started with MRI scanning on the 7T pharmascan at UiB pdf
• General questions and answers on animal handling, anesthesia and Vivarium procedures pdf
• How to collect your first MR images pdf
• How to transfer MRI data from the scanner pdf

Health, safety and regulations

All MRI users should read and sign the following document: Guidelines for use of MRI at MIC

Useful links

• MIC old webpage
• MIC new webpage
• Booking the MR
• Prices for equipment use
• Vivarium-Dyreavdelingen ved UiB