Siemens HELICON

A new superconducting 2 tesla magnet for whole-body magnetic resonance imaging and spectroscopy has been developed as a serial product. The HELICON magnet has the following features: Cryogen losses including ramping losses are eliminated due to helium refrigerator cooling. The magnet size is moderate despite of a large warm bore. The magnet can be ramped in 25 min from zero field to 2 Tesla. The field stability is 5 ppm/hour immediately after ramping and settles to 1 ppm/hour within 1 hour. Shimmed homogeneity band width is less than +- 5 ppm on a 50 cm diameter spherical volume using an 11-plane field plot. The magnet can be combined with a specially designed iron-yoke shield which reduces the extension of the 0.5 tesla stray field line at 2 tesla operating field to 7.4 m axially and 5.6 m radially. Cold shipment of the magnet is possible without special precautions