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Welcome! MR Centre of Excellence inaugurated in Vienna The Centre of Exellence "High-field Magnetic Resonance (MR)"of Vienna General Hospital, Austria, jointly founded by the departments of Medical Physics and Radiodiagnostics, was opened in June 2003. It evolved out of an interdisciplinary research group that has been active for many years. Within only a few years the relatively small group developed into a renowned scientific institution with a staff of nearly 20 carrying out numerous sucessful projects. The foundations of this centre were laid in 1996 when one of the world«s first 3 Tesla high-field MR machines was installed at the Vienna-based University Departement of Radiodiagnostics, which still constitutes the only 3 T machine operated in Austria.This was complemented by an interdisciplinary scientific network involving several hospitals and research institutes. Headed by Prof. Siegfried Trattnig, radiologist, and Prof. Ewald Moser, physicist, the Centre of Exellence aims to combine Europe«s leading competence in methodological-technical developement in the high-field area using new approaches in medicine with modern diagnosis. Today magnetic resonance imaging is seen as the driving force behind modern diagnosis in medicine, in particular due to its diverse applications and, contrary to computed tomography, to the non-existing radiation exposure. In order to be able to continue to partake in the front edge of world-wide research, the centre plans to aquire relevant high-field MR scanners (field strength of 4 to 10 Tesla) in the future. The Centre will act as a core research facility for the newly founded Medical University. Embedded in one of Europe«s state-of-the-art hospitals, the centre«s potential with regard to the methodological- technical developement in basic MR research as well as to the emerging fields of neuro-functional and spectroscopic imaging is unparalleled throughout the world. The longstanding experience in these areas will lead to an improvement in the clinical use of high-field MR. This for the first time allows the use of methods that go beyond mere morphology for an improved diagnosis of various diseases at the molecular, functional and metabolic levels, which will lead to a revolutionary developement from imaging diagnosis to new qualitative status, which can be described using the term "functional diagnosis". 
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