New MRI Scanner Lands in Mellon Institute

Traffic stopped on Fifth Avenue — literally — for the installation of a new 3-Tesla Siemens Prisma MRI Scanner. The 30,000-pound magnet for the scanner was hoisted by crane from Fifth Avenue, over the top of Mellon Institute and into the new joint Carnegie Mellon and University of Pittsburgh neuroimaging facility that was built in one of the building’s interior courtyards. The scanner is a purely research-dedicated system that will support more than $54 million in ongoing research projects at both schools, including studies on the neural basis of cognition, the developing brain, the progression of dementia and the development of cutting-edge brain mapping technologies.