Lab-born, user-ready: Translation of high-end technology into everyday use
8th Skope User Meeting: October 14, 2025, Minneapolis, MN, US
Welcome
The 8th Skope User Meeting under the theme “Lab-born, user-ready: Translation of high-end technology into everyday use” will be held on Tuesday, October 14, 2025, at CMRR in Minneapolis, MN, USA. This event precedes CMRR’s Workshop on Ultra-High Field Imaging and is free for all participants. A virtual participation option is available for the morning program (guest talks and demo session 1).
To get an idea of what you can expect, check out some of the past meetings (incl. resources) or watch selected past talks.
Agenda
Tuesday, October 14
Room LRB/MTRF 1-110, Cancer & Cardiovascular Research Building (2231 6th St SE, Minneapolis, MN 55455)
| Time | Topic | Speakers |
|---|---|---|
| 8.30 am – 9.00 am | Welcome coffee | |
| — | ||
| 9.00 am – 9.40 am | Opening session | Skope & attendees |
| — | ||
| 9.40 am – 10.15 am | Traversing k-space efficiently: Potential for fast fMRI | Saskia Bollmann, PhD The University of Queensland |
| — | ||
| 10.15 am – 10.50 am | Ultra-high gradient strength MRI: From technical hurdles to clinical impact | Gabriel Ramos Llordén, PhD Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Department of Radiology, Massachusetts General Hospital, and Harvard Medical School |
| — | ||
| 10.50 am – 11.15 am | Networking & knowledge-sharing coffee break | |
| — | ||
| 11.15 am – 11.50 am | Demo session 1: NYOX – behind the scenes | Christoph Schildknecht, PhD |
| — | ||
| 11.50 am – 12.00 pm | Final remarks & demo instructions | Skope |
| — | ||
| 12.00 pm – 1.00 pm | Lunch | |
| — | ||
| 1.00 pm – 3.30 pm | Demo session 2: NeuroCam 7T | Cameron Cushing, PhD |
| Demo session 3: Incorporating higher-order fields into image reconstruction | Christian Mirkes, PhD | |
| — | ||
| 3.30 pm – 4.00 pm | Q&A and wrap-up | |
| — | ||
| 6.00 pm | Social dinner at Surly Brewery | 520 Malcolm Ave SE, Minneapolis, MN 55414 |
Abstracts
Traversing k-space efficiently: Potential for fast fMRI
Scientific talk by Saskia Bollmann, PhD
The design of k-space trajectories determines the efficiency of fMRI acquisitions, with different approaches balancing robustness and ease-of-use with performance. In parallel, the new impulse gradient hardware allows faster encoding. Together, these developments enable higher temporal resolution, which is supported by animal and human studies showing that the hemodynamic signals underlying fMRI operate on faster timescales than traditionally assumed. These advances highlight the potential of fast fMRI to more directly probe dynamic aspects of brain function.
Ultra-high gradient strength MRI: From technical hurdles to clinical impact
Scientific talk by Gabriel Ramos Llordén, PhD
Major MRI vendors have begun integrating high-performance gradient systems into their commercial platforms, enabling the study of tissue microstructure in health and disease at an unprecedented level of detail. This talk highlights both the technological challenges and opportunities drawn from our first-hand experience in developing and validating the 3T Siemens Magnetom Connectom.X, an ultra-high performance gradient system equipped with 500 mT/m gradient strength and 600 T/m/s slew rate. We present our latest advances in image acquisition methods and tissue microstructural mapping, together with novel k-space encoding trajectories enhanced by field monitoring technology. Ongoing efforts to disseminate these innovations into commercial scanners, with an emphasis on clinical translation, will be discussed. Collectively, these developments signal the emergence of a new generation of faster, more precise, and more robust neuroimaging methods for probing human brain circuits.
NYOX – behind the scenes
Demo session 1
With NYOX, Skope is taking a new approach to recording field probe signals. The NMR signals are digitized close to the magnet, then optically transmitted to the external miniature processing unit. Here, the signals are pre-processed in real-time and streamed via TCP/IP network – all achieved with a portable system. In this demo, we will look into the implementation, the underlying technology, and explain why we opted for the JESD radio head approach.
NeuroCam 7T
Demo session 2
This demo will introduce the NeuroCam 7T, highlighting its unique features including integrated field monitoring, increased subject field of view, and new probe technology. We’ll explore its capabilities by demonstrating the improved subject handling workflow and data acquisition. Finally, we’ll showcase the power of 3rd-order correction by applying an extended encoding model to improve image sharpness and reduce artifacts.
Incorporating higher-order fields into image reconstruction
Demo session 3
This demo will highlight the significance of higher-order fields in MR imaging. We’ll begin by outlining why 3rd-order field modeling is crucial for eddy currents and system imperfections, followed by a theoretical background on the extended signal equation incorporating these higher-order terms. The session will demonstrate both CPU and GPU-accelerated PyTorch-based reconstruction implementations.
Speakers
Saskia Bollmann, PhD
The University of Queensland
Speaker bio: Saskia Bollmann obtained her M.Sc. ETH in Biomedical Engineering from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich in 2013, where she utilized concurrent magnetic field monitoring to improve image quality and temporal stability of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). She then moved to Brisbane in 2014, to pursue a PhD at the Centre for Advanced Imaging, The University of Queensland under the supervision of Prof. Markus Barth. She investigated contrast mechanisms and signal properties of fMRI focusing on ultra-high field applications. In 2019, she joined A/Prof. Jonathan Polimeni at the Martinos Center for Biomedical Engineering, Massachusetts General Hospital, where she employed ultra-high field MRI to image the blood vessels of the human brain, and better understand their contribution to the fMRI signal. She returned to Brisbane in 2020 and is currently a Research Fellow at the School of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Architecture and Information Technology. She is developing new contrast mechanisms for functional MRI and investigating the effect of the vasculature on the fMRI signal.
Gabriel Ramos Llordén, PhD
Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Department of Radiology, Massachusetts General Hospital, and Harvard Medical School
Speaker bio: Gabriel Ramos Llordén is an Instructor (Junior Faculty) at the Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Department of Radiology, Massachusetts General Hospital, and Harvard Medical School. With over a decade of experience in MRI methodology development, his research focuses on advancing acquisition and reconstruction strategies to improve the characterization of the human brain in health and disease. He leads the imaging reconstruction and processing core of the Siemens 3T Connectome 2.0 scanner initiative, a high-performance neuroimaging platform for mesoscale brain mapping, with this work recently accepted in Nature Biomedical Engineering. Dr. Ramos Llorden earned his Ph.D. in Medical Physics from the University of Antwerp, Belgium (2018), specializing in quantitative MRI relaxometry, and holds a degree in Electrical Engineering with a focus on medical image signal processing from the University of Valladolid, Spain (2012). He is a 2024 NIH BRAIN Initiative K99/R00 Awardee, developing next-generation diffusion and functional MRI biomarkers for the early diagnosis of memory disorders. Gabriel is a Junior Fellow of the International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine (ISMRM).
