Testing High-Power MRI Axis Amplifiers

摘要

Tracewell Systems, a custom power supply manufacturer and engineering services company, builds power supplies and other electronic equipment for a variety of customers. One contract came from a major manufacturer of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) systems to build axis amplifiers for its imagers and a system to test them. The test system accommodated one to three power amplifiers, each mounted on rack slides in its own drawer in the right cabinet bay in Figure 1. Primary power comes from a water-cooled power supply that runs on 480-V, three-phase AC located at the bottom of the right cabinet bay. The load is an MRI gradient tube, and a cooler in the left cabinet bay supplies water for the power supply and the gradient tube. Instrumentation is located in the middle cabinet bay. The system's modular design makes field service easier.