Dear ISMRM colleagues,
You are probably aware of the recent announcement by Agilent Technologies to exit OEM magnet production. Agilent is currently the only supplier worldwide of ultra-high-field magnets for MR in humans. Therefore the decision to stop making such magnets is a cause of great concern to the high-field MR research community and to ISMRM. In fact it threatens to substantially slow down progress in one of the most thriving and promising directions of MR research.
At the recent meeting of the ISMRM High Field Systems & Applications Study Group in Salt Lake City it was decided to express these concerns in a letter to the Agilent leadership. This proposal has been strongly endorsed by the ISMRM Board of Trustees. With this letter ISMRM requests that Agilent’s leadership enter into a discussion with ISMRM to ensure that the OEM magnet business (formerly Magnex Scientific) be wound down in a responsible way that best attempts to enable the underlying key technologies to be taken forward by another entity.
The ISMRM leadership has drafted a petition on the proceeding page to this effect and would like to ask you to support it by adding your signature. To sign, please enter your name and affiliation. Please sign the document by Friday 17 May 2013 if you would like your name to be included.
Thank you very much for your support.
Sincerely,
Peter Jezzard
President, ISMRM