Philips Korea said it has launched MR 7700, one of its newest magnetic resonance imaging devices, on Wednesday.

The company stressed that the product stands out in the crowded MR diagnostic market with its newly designed XP gradients, offering significant improvements over its predecessors.

According to the company, the device's most notable upgrade is that it is equipped with advanced XP gradients.

"In image diagnostics, MRI is an essential tool for providing accurate information. However, challenges such as long scan durations, ranging from 20 minutes to an hour, have limited its application, especially with pediatric, elderly, or claustrophobic patients," the company said. "The MR 7700 addresses this limitation with its XP gradients, which boosts image quality and improves scan speed."

The new model boasts a gradient strength of 65 mT/m, a 45 percent improvement over earlier models, and a gradient slew rate of 220T/m/s, enabling rapid and precise high-resolution imaging, it added.

The company stressed that such improvements enhance the scanning speed and signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) for diffusion-weighted images (DWI) by up to 35 percent.

Another capability of the device is that it incorporates the SmartSpeed AI platform, which couples Philips' proprietary compressed SENSE and Adaptive-CS-Net AI algorithms.

This combination selects vital data, reduces noise during the iterative reconstruction process, and delivers up to a 65 percent increase in resolution and a three times faster scanning speed compared to older models.

"Another remarkable capability of the device is its multi-nuclei solution, which allows the detection of signals from a variety of atoms beyond just hydrogen," the company said. "This functionality can glean metabolic information across anatomical structures, supporting research into new biomarkers."

Apart from these groundbreaking features, the MR 7700 is designed with both doctors and patients in mind, it added.

Such functions include the AI-powered MR Workspace, which streamlines the MR scanning preparation phase, and SmartExam, which automates various scanning steps to enhance operational efficiency.

The scanner's 70cm wide bore also offers added comfort for claustrophobic patients.

Philips Korea said that it will debut the MR 7700 at the 79th Korean Congress of Radiology (KCR 2023), which will be held at COEX from Sep. 20-23.