The National Institutes of Health (NIH) awarded The University of California at San Francisco (UCSF) $5.5 million for the advancement of a new magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) technology. The technology, invented by GE Healthcare scientists, will create scans of tumors and other diseased tissue with possibly more detail than any method now being used.

The project was further developed in a partnership between GE and UCSF at a new center the university created at its Mission Bay campus. The center, approved for NIH funding in August, makes use of new instruments and GE’s most advanced MRI scanners.

According to Daniel Vigneron, Ph.D. and UCSF professor of radiology, the project encompasses more researchers and laboratory space than any such program in the world

The original pilot project was completed this year and aimed at gauging the aggressiveness of tumors in men with untreated prostate cancer. This could help doctors rare, fast-growing tumors which pose a real threat and slow-moving cancers unlikely to cause real harm. The new system can boost the MRI’s signal more than 50,000 times.