GEC Medical - Magnetic Resonance Imaging

Magnetic Resonance Imaging

GEC also funded some of the development of Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) using resistive magnet technology. At the same time, EMI Medical who had introduced the CT Scanner some time before using the principle of Godfrey Hounsfield, for which he won the 1979 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine, were developing MRI using cryogenic magnets - which gave a higher field strength. At the time the maximum field strength with a resistive magnet was about 0.1T. With a cryogenic magnet, 1.0 T was easily achieved. EMI Medical went bankrupt at around this time so their interests in MRI were bought by GEC. This was a major impetus for GEC's acquisition of Picker Corporation in 1981.

The merged company as Picker International had the first MRI scanner approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on the US market. However business in the following decade did not suit them, and despite winning an order for air-droppable X-Ray units for the US Army, they closed the factory at Wembley in 1990, along with other sites in Canada and Germany.