The results, which will appear in the August issue of Physical Review Letters , were such a shock and a paradigm shift that researchers sat on the discovery for three years to rework the equations and make sure that what they were seeing was actually possible. You can have something theoretically, but there's no real solution to it. The shield works by slightly altering the primary magnetic force without sacrificing its effectiveness. Previously, suppression of magnetic fields had been achieved by positioning an iron barrier or a set of secondary coils outside the main coil. This is the first time that such a small coil could cancel out 100 percent of the unwanted extra charges.
Researchers are now sufficiently satisfied with the results to talk about marketing new devices.
Picker International , maker of diagnostic imaging devices, asked Case Western to help develop a new line of MRIs smaller than the long cylinders that patients must be placed inside. At the same time, they wanted something better than open MRIs, which aren't as confining but are not as accurate or powerful, either. Instead of a long tunnel, which some patients are horrified by, we'd like to have, for example, shorter cylinders, Brown said. With a long cylinder, you can have a long shield. The shield has a harder and harder time the shorter it gets.