Establishment of the production method of highly polarized 3He gas for the Hyperpolarized 3He-MRI

2017 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 26287050
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (B)
• Allocation Type: Partial Multi-year Fund
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: Particle/Nuclear/Cosmic ray/Astro physics
• Research Institution: Kobe Tokiwa University
• Principal Investigator: Tanaka Masayoshi 神戸常盤大学, 保健科学部, その他 (70071397)
• Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha): 上田 国寛 神戸常盤大学, 保健科学部, 教授 (00027070) ; 藤原 守 大阪大学, 核物理研究センター, 協同研究員 (00030031) ; 太田 岳史 東京大学, 大学病院, 助教 (20727408) ; 牧野 誠司 和歌山県立医科大学, 医学部, 教授 (70222289) ; 與曽井 優 大阪大学, 核物理研究センター, 教授 (80183995) ; 藤村 寿子 和歌山県立医科大学, 医学部, 准教授 (90378589)
• Research Collaborator: Frossati Georgio ライデン・ライデンクライオジェニックス社 ; de Waard Arlette ライデン・ライデンクライオジェニックス社 ; Rouillé Gérard パリー大学南校, 研究員
• Project Period (FY): 2014-04-01 – 2018-03-31
• Keywords: 超偏極３HeーMRI / ３He/4He希釈冷凍機 / 強制偏極法 / 無冷媒３He/4He希釈冷凍機 / 高速融解法

Outline of Final Research Achievements

The final goal of our project is to produce hyperpolarized, i.e. highly polarized 3He gas for MRI(Magnetic Resonance Imaging) by means of the Brute Force Method with the 3He/4He dilution refrigerator(DRS2500), the 17 T superconducting solenoid coil, a menbrane type Pomeranchuk cell, and the rapid melting equipment which allows rapid conversion of solid 3He to 3He gas at room temperature without significant depolarization.
During the development, we found that it is not an efficient method to use the DRS2500 before fundamental research on, for example, the Pomeranchuk cell often required many revisions of the experimental equipmen. For this purpose, we introduced an easily accessible cryofree 3He/4He dilution refrigerator(Kobe10μ). However, many serious troubles occured in the circulation line of Kobe10μ. It took almost two years for recovering this failure. Now, the development got restarted toward our goal.

Free Research Field

原子核物理学