Affordable, Accessible, Adjustable and Accurate (A4IM)
MR Imaging - Stakeholder Workshop
8th May 2026, 9:00 AM - 2:00 PM
All Africa House, 43 Stanley Road, Rondebosch, 7700 Cape Town, South Africa
Zoom meeting link:
us06web.zoom.us/j/86970085992?pwd=lCvTKaQig0j697FRO2gESM1IRS0AhP.1
Meeting-ID: 869 7008 5992
Kenncode: 256554
We are pleased to invite you to the A4IM Stakeholder Workshop, a hands on event focused on building, deploying, and scaling accessible low field MRI technologies. While low field MRI continues to advance through innovations in affordable hardware and AI based reconstruction, the real impact will come from collaboration: bringing together clinical users, engineers, researchers, and industry partners to define how these systems can be adopted in practice. The A4IM consortium is developing an open source 50 mT MRI platform designed for global accessibility. During this workshop, the emphasis is on practical experience, user needs, regulatory considerations, and international perspectives on expanding MRI access, particularly in resource limited settings. This event brings together experts from Europe, Africa, and beyond to share experiences building the open source A4IM scanner, discuss clinical and translational opportunities, and identify remaining barriers to widespread use. The program includes technical sessions, lots of in vivo examples and panel discussions. In the afternoon, we will have a joint evening symposium with the SMART Africa Network on democratizing MRI access on the African continent. For this afternoon event, we will have limited places available. If you sign up, we will send out formal confirmations.
| 9:00 - 9:20 | Arrival and upload of presentations Tea and Coffee |
| 9:20 - 9:30 | Welcome Christoph Kolbitsch (PTB, Germany) |
| 9:30 - 11:00 |
How to build, operate and certify the Open-Source A4IM scanner OSI² ONE v2?
What is available? What is missing? Challenges and future directions of:
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| 11:00 - 11:30 | Tea and Coffee break |
| 11:30 - 13:00 |
Experiences of (re-)building an Open-Source MRI Julia Pfitzer (TU Graz, Austria)Marcel Ochsendorf (Frauenhofer MEVIS, Germany) Haile Kassehun, Stefan du Plessis (McGill University, Canada) |
| 13:00 - 14:00 | Lunch |
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| 18:00 - 21:00 | Symposium in collaboration with SMART Africa Network (see below) |
| Closing dinner |
8th May 2026, 6:00 - 9:00 PM
All Africa House, 43 Stanley Road, Rondebosch, 7700 Cape Town, South Africa
| 17:45-18:00 | Welcome and Cocktails | |
| 18:00-18:15 | Introduction / Meeting overview Godwin Ogbole, Derek Jones |
Moderator: Jackline Thairu |
| 18:15-18:55 |
Symposium I
Democratising low-field MRI in Africa Panellist: Derek Jones, Andrew Webb, Kevin Sheth, Joel Stein, Tom O'Reilly, Maclean Vokhiwa |
Moderators: Tchoyoson Lim Ruben van den Broek |
| 18:55-19:05 | Presentation A4IM Scanner and demo | Lukas Winter Christoph Kolbitsch |
| 19:05-19:15 | Tea and Coffee break | |
| 19:15-19:25 | Hyperfine presentation; Latest advances in the LFMRI SWOOP system | Rafael O'Halloran |
| 19:25-20:00 |
Symposium II
Overcoming barriers to the utilization low-field MRI in Africa Panellists: Johnes Obungoloch, Steve Williams, Victor Mngomezulu, Alex Leong, Gulani Vikas |
Anthonia Ikpeme Shawna Farquharson |
| 20:00-21:00 | Dinner and networking | A4IM and SMART Africa Network |