{
  "id": 462683,
  "title": "How Tata Trusts and Sridhar Vembu kept the first MRI scanner built in India out of a multinational’s hands",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/08/10/how-tata-trusts-and-sridhar-vembu-kept-the-first-mri-scanner-built-in",
  "topic": "health",
  "section": "Health & Medicine",
  "published": "2026-08-10T11:14:03.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "YourStory",
    "slug": "yourstory",
    "url": "https://yourstory.com/2026/08/tata-trusts-sridhar-vembu-india-mri-scanner"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "In December 2025, the first MRI scanner built in India made its way to a medical facility, marking a significant milestone for the country's medical imaging industry. The compact, full-body 1.5 tesla scanner, developed by Voxelgrids Innovations, has been kept away from multinational manufacturers, thanks to the efforts of Arjun Arunachalam and Tata Trusts.\n\nArunachalam, a graduate from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and former GE Global Research Center employee, founded Voxelgrids in Bengaluru in 2017. After facing challenges in securing funding, he sought support from Tata Trusts, which connected him with the Foundation for Innovation and Social Entrepreneurship (FISE). In 2018, a prototype of the MRI scanner was installed at the Sathya Sai Institute of Higher Medical Sciences in Bengaluru, producing its first images in March of that year.\n\nThe key to Voxelgrids' success lies in the design of the superconducting magnet, which eliminates the need for liquid helium, a scarce and expensive resource typically required for conventional MRI scanners. This innovation has reduced the scanner's size, weight, and power consumption, making it more suitable for smaller hospitals and mobile configurations. The company's engineering team, which covers software, electronics, and cryogenic magnet development, has been working in-house to achieve ISO 13485 certification and secure a commercial manufacturing and sales license in June 2023.",
  "summary": "The Bengaluru-based company builds a full-body 1.5 tesla MRI scanner engineered and manufactured in India, designed to run without liquid helium, with its first clinical installation at a cancer centre near Nagpur.",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}