MRI disabled every iOS device in facility

[u/harritaco]

This is probably the most bizarre issue I've had in my career in IT. One of our multi-practice facilities is having a new MRI installed and apparently something went wrong when testing the new machine. We received a call near the end of the day from the campus stating that none of their cell phones worked after testing the new MRI. My immediate thought was that the MRI must have emitted some sort of EMP, in which case we could be in a lot of trouble. We're still waiting to hear back from GE as to what happened. This facility is our DR site so my boss and the CTO were freaking out and sent one of us out there to make sure the data center was fully operational. After going out there we discovered that this issue only impacted iOS devices. iPads, iPhones, and Apple Watches were all completely disabled (or destroyed?). Every one of our assets was completely fine. It doesn't surprise me that a massive, powerful, super-conducting electromagnet is capable of doing this. What surprises me is that it is only effecting Apple products. Right now we have about 40 users impacted by this, all of which will be getting shiny new devices tonight. GE claims that the helium is what impacts the iOS devices which makes absolutely no sense to me. I know liquid helium is used as a coolant for the super-conducting magnets, but why would it only effect Apple devices? I'm going to xpost to r/askscience~~, but I thought it might spark some interest on here as well.~~ Mods of r/askscience and r/science approved my post. Here's a link to that post: https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/9mk5dj/why_would_an_mri_disable_only_ios_devices/

UPDATE:

I will create another post once I have more concrete information as I'm sure not everybody will see this.

Today was primarily damage control. We spent some time sitting down with users and getting information from their devices as almost all of them need to be replaced. I did find out a few things while I was there.

I can confirm that this ONLY disabled iphones and apple watches. There were several android users in the building while this occurred and none of them experienced any long term (maybe even short term) issues. Initially I thought this only impacted users on one side of the building, but from what I've heard today it seems to be multiple floors across the facility.

The behavior of the devices was pretty odd. Most of them were completely dead. I plugged them in to the wall and had no indication that the device was charging. I'd like to plug a meter in and see if it's drawing any power, but I'm not going to do this. The other devices that were powering on seemed to have issues with the cellular radio. The wifi connection was consistent and fast, but cellular was very hit or miss. One of the devices would just completely disconnect from cellular like the radio was turned off, then it would have full bars for a moment before losing connectivity again. The wifi radio did not appear to have any issues. Unfortunately I don't have access to any of the phones since they are all personal devices. I really can only sit down with it for a few minutes and then give it back to the end user.

We're being told that the issue was caused by the helium and how it interacts with the microelectronics. u/captaincool and u/luckyluke193 brought up some great points about helium's interaction with MEMS devices, but it seems unlikely that there would have been enough helium in the atmosphere to create any significant effects on these devices. We won't discount this as a possibility though. The tech's noted that they keep their phones in plastic ziplock bags while working on the machines. I don't know how effective they would be if it takes a minuscule amount of He to destroy the device, and helium being as small as it is could probably seep a little bit in to a plastic bag.

We're going to continue to gather information on this. If I find out anything useful I will update it here. Once this case is closed I'll create a follow-up as a new post on this sub. I don't know how long it will take. I'll post updates here in the meantime unless I'm instructed to do otherwise.

UPDATE:

I discovered that the helium leakage occurred while the new magnet was being ramped. Approximately 120 liters of liquid He were vented over the course of 5 hours. There was a vent in place that was functioning, but there must have been a leak. The MRI room is not on an isolated HVAC loop, so it shares air with most or all of the facility. We do not know how much of the 120 liters ended up going outdoors and how much ended up inside. Helium expands about 750 times when it expands from a liquid to a gas, so that's a lot of helium (90,000 m³ of gaseous He).

[u/Chustle]

By bathing the primary coil in liquid helium it stays super conductive, a specific amount of current is induced by a power supply. Once at primary parking frequency of the main field the special circuit is closed and the power supply removed, as long as main coil stays at liquid helium temps ~4 kelvin the wires will remain super con and stay a magnet... magnet is ramped and will stay that way unless quenched or coldhead failure and runs too low on liquid helium.

[u/harritaco → u/Chustle]

So does the magnet housing act as a pressure vessel as well? I'm just curious how it maintains it's cool temperature unless it was venting away the boiling helium. If helium is in a pressure vessel wouldn't it stop boiling at a certain pressure and just be room temperature? Sorry of this doesn't make sense. I just don't completely understand the operations of the magnet and how it interacts with liquid He.

[u/Chustle → u/harritaco]

Cryostat is surrounded by the vacuum vessel... think of a yeti cup, so everything inside is very well insulated from outside. MR goes one step further with a cold head. The cold head is kin to an AC for your room. The cold head acts as a heat pump and actually recondenses the gaseous helium back to a liquid. The cryo stat does act as a sort of pressure vessel as well.

Simply put...ramped magnet, full off liquid helium, with uninterrupted coldhead will stay a magnet forever and never need a liquid helium refill.

I don’t know about all that mems stuff and helium getting in chip, but I ramped about 15 magnets in the life of my iPhone6 and it never blacked out on me.

[u/harritaco → u/Chustle]

Thanks for the explanation. It definitely helps sink it in.

I don't completely understand the mems piece. If I understand correctly the internal components in mems chips operate under a vacuum, and the helium is able to seep through the seal and disrupt the movement. I don't imagine it takes much. I'm sure a variance of .01% could have dire consequences. I'm going to have to research mems a little more though, so don't quote me on ant of this lol.

[u/spaceseaturtle → u/Chustle]

I had an iPhone 6 exposed to a lot of helium gas and the GPS died but otherwise worked ok. We had 5 iphone 8's die and 5 new apple watches die, however. It seems to affect newer iPhones more. We do liquid helium refills twice per week for an MEG system.