VoxelGrids Innovations, a Bengaluru medtech startup, has built and clinically deployed what is described as India’s first fully indigenous 1.5-tesla MRI scanner — a machine that skips liquid helium entirely, weighs roughly half as much as a conventional system, and costs about 40 per cent less to build, according to The Hindu BusinessLine. The scanner is installed at the Chandrapur Cancer Care Foundation near Nagpur, where it is now used for patient diagnostics — the country’s first clinical installation of a homegrown MRI system.
Why MRI was India’s hardest diagnostic to build at home
MRI scanners are among the most capital-intensive and logistically demanding machines in medicine: a typical imported 1.5T or 3T system costs ₹8–15 crore before civil works, shielding and service contracts, and most designs depend on a constant supply of liquid helium to keep their superconducting magnets cold. India’s installed base is estimated at only around 5,000 machines — roughly 3.5 per million people — and a Competition Commission of India market study puts the top five foreign OEMs (Siemens, GE, Philips, United Imaging and Hitachi) at over 91 per cent of the market by revenue, per BusinessLine. Building one at home means mastering the magnet, the gradient coils, the radio-frequency chains and the image-reconstruction software together — which is why, unlike ultrasound or X-ray, no Indian company had pulled it off.
The helium-free engineering
VoxelGrids’ core engineering bet is a “dry magnet” design: instead of bathing the superconducting magnet in liquid helium, the magnet is conduction-cooled with cryocoolers, removing one of the costliest and most supply-fragile consumables in medical imaging. The team used multiphysics simulation — COMSOL modelling of thermal cooldown curves against experimental data — to validate the cold-head configuration and mechanical layout before committing to hardware, according to a COMSOL engineering case study.
According to the company’s founder, the result is a scanner weighing about 2–3 tonnes against 4–6 tonnes for conventional machines, at roughly 40 per cent lower build cost, with tightly packaged in-house electronics around the same bore size that make it far more power-efficient, BusinessLine reported in an in-depth profile of the team. The lower weight is operationally decisive: it opens the door to upper-floor installations in small hospitals and, eventually, mobile MRI units — diagnostics that can travel to patients instead of the other way around. The company also offers a pay-per-use model so smaller hospitals can avoid the large upfront cost entirely.
A 12-year build, backed by Zoho and Tata Trusts
The scanner is the culmination of a 12-year effort led by founder and CEO Arjun Arunachalam, who returned to India from a research career in the United States to work on the problem, alongside co-founders Swathy Padarthi (head of product) and Shankar Murthy Udupa (COO). Early support came from Social Alpha and the Tata Trusts, followed by a National Biopharma Mission grant under BIRAC in 2019; Zoho Corporation subsequently backed the company, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is among its more recent supporters, per BusinessLine.
From one hospital to a national footprint
The Chandrapur deployment — a cancer-care setting where MRI is clinically indispensable — is the proof point that the machine works in the field, not just the lab. VoxelGrids says its Bengaluru facility can manufacture 20–25 scanners a year, and it has spoken of a commercial launch this fiscal year with containerised, mobile versions to follow. If it delivers, India joins a very small club of countries that can design and build high-field medical imaging systems from first principles — and the tier-2 and tier-3 hospitals that have never been able to justify an imported scanner get a machine engineered, priced and serviced for their reality.
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Caveats, honestly stated
“First indigenous MRI scanner” is how the press and the company characterise the achievement, and it is worth noting that earlier Indian efforts (notably in research and low-field imaging) existed in parallel — the claim here is specifically about a commercial-grade, 1.5T full-body clinical scanner designed and manufactured in India. The 40-per-cent cost and weight figures are the company’s own claims, reported by BusinessLine rather than independently measured; and the broader “70 per cent cheaper scans” figure circulating in YouTube explainers comes from third-party commentary, not the company, so this article does not repeat it. The company’s public website carries renders rather than photos of the installed system, so the official company logo stands in as the article image. None of that changes the core fact: a homegrown 1.5T MRI is scanning real patients at a real hospital in Maharashtra.
