German Ultrahigh Field Imaging (GUFI)

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Within the past few years, seven centers for human ultra-high-field (UHF) magnetic resonance (MR) imaging have been set up in Germany. To make this expensive and highly complex technology accessible to a larger number of researchers, organizational cooperation of the UHF MR centers is crucial. To achieve this goal, all German UHF centers have decided to establish a national network called German Ultrahigh Field Imaging (GUFI), which will be coordinated by the centers in Essen and Magdeburg. Within the proposed project, vital organizational structures will be created at both the administrative and technical levels. In particular, communication between the centers and external users will be facilitated via a web portal. This portal will enable external users to find the UHF MR facility best suited to their research question, learn about the terms and conditions of the facility for allocating measurement time, and finally to book measurement time on the systems online. In addition, the handling of safety-related issues and legal and ethical frameworks will be harmonized across all UHF MR centers in Germany. On the technical level, the project involves the exchange of latest imaging protocols and in particular the development of new approaches to ensure common quality standards for the obtained image and spectral data, optimized for the challenges of UHF MR systems, so that external users can be assured of ideal conditions and so that measurements on different UHF MR systems can be compared. Finally, the project will also coordinate its work with other initiatives in this area, such as the Euro-BioImaging project (www.eurobioimaging.eu).