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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:

  1. Hardware
    Umberto Zanovello (INRIM, Italy)
  2. Software and image reconstruction
    David Schote, Christoph Kolbitsch (PTB, Germany)
  3. Reference Data
    Marina Fernandez Garcia (I3M, Spain)
  4. Documentation including regulatory resources
    Lukas Winter (PTB, Germany)
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

18:00 - 21:00 Symposium in collaboration with SMART Africa Network
(see below)
Closing dinner
In collaboration with the SMART African network:
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