[syhprum (OP)]

How is its magnetic field generated and how strong is it, what is the volume it can scan and how does the resolutuion compare with a full size machine.

[alancalverd]

Looks like a throwback to the early Helmholtz-coil machines of the 1970s. The field strength isn't specified in any of the reports I have seen, but I've worked with low-field (0.1 - 0.6 tesla) machines and the published Swoop images are noisier than any I've ever tried to sell.

The tradeoffs in MRI are such things as slice thickness/signal noise ratio, field strength/SNR/tissue contrast, field strength/acquisition time, field homogeneity/acquisition volume, field strength/stray field, shield design/interference susceptibility.... The small print in the brochure says the images are shown without the electromagnetic shield.

The advantage of this design is that the primary field is perpendicular to the patient axis, so you can use a closefitting solenoid receiver coil and get about twice the SNR that you  achieve with the same field parallel to the axis. It is also a very small volume machine - apparently for heads and limbs only. Patient volume has been described to me as the most expensive real estate on earth: when I proposed expanding a similar design to accommodate a racehorse, the R&D estimate was $10,000,000 per inch.

That said, it is indeed possible to acquire clinically useful images at 0.1T or less, so it probably has some applicability and potential.

[Bored chemist]

when I proposed expanding a similar design to accommodate a racehorse, the R&D estimate was $10,000,000 per inch.

That's interesting.
Premier racehorses are something like $1,000,000 per inch. (About $100,000,000 and about 100 inches)
So, if the machine is used to help, say 1000 racehorses to the extent of 1% of their value, it might pay for itself.

[alancalverd]

Fair enough, but even if we had raised $100M for R&D (most humans fit in a 21 inch gap, pregnant racehorses need at least another 10 inches), the machines still cost $1M each to make and $0.5M to deliver and install (the prototype for humans weighed 300 tons) so the probability of bankruptcy exceeded the probability of a 10%  yield on investment within 5 years.

US small investors are exceptionally patient (which explains the difference between US and UK industry when it comes to turning R into D into product into profit) but nobody was going to mortgage the farm for that one. Especially as I can x-ray a horse from stem to stern with a $500k machine and we had a 0.3T mobile MRI that could accommodate a horse's leg - the bit that usually goes wrong.

[Bored chemist]

I wonder how much the first X ray machine for horses cost (adjusted for inflation).
Sometimes "better" is more expensive.

[alancalverd]

AFAIK  machines that can scan the entire horse from nose to tail have only been around for about 10 years, and have been getting cheaper "in real terms" as computing power increases.

It's still a rare beast because 95% of equine problems requiring x-ray are damage or disease in the distal leg, which you can x-ray with a £5000 portable machine. And even these have got cheaper and smaller as old iron mains transformers have been replaced by batteries and high frequency inverters.