MRI Technology Patents: Who Leads, Where the Gaps Are 2026
- Filings have cooled since the 2019 peak. 931 families that year against 665 at the 2022 midpoint and a partial 25 in the most recent year — a flat-to-declining curve, not a growth story.
- The largest legacy holders have gone quiet. Toshiba, GE and Hitachi Medical show zero families in the latest year, and Philips is down 95% year-on-year — momentum has drained out of the historic leaders.
- Claim density sits outside the imaging core. G01R measurement claims (17,800 records) outnumber A61B diagnostic claims (10,368), while image processing (G06T, 1,126) and electrotherapy (A61N, 577) remain comparatively thin.
Filing growth compares 2021 (753 records) with 2024 (445) — a three-year span. 2024 is the most recent year we treat as complete: publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so 2025 onwards are still filling in and any growth rate that ends there would understate the field. Top-5 share is the combined record count of the five largest assignees divided by all 21,525 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What the MRI patent record actually shows
Magnetic resonance imaging patenting is dominated by measurement and magnet engineering rather than by the diagnostic use case itself. Claims tagged G01R (electric and magnetic measurement) outnumber A61B (diagnosis and surgery) by a wide margin, which tells you the contested ground is gradient coil design, superconducting magnet control and signal-to-noise engineering — not the clinical application layer. Filing activity peaked in 2019 and has since flattened, with the historic large assignees pulling back sharply in the most recent reporting year.
Publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so the last one or two years in any trend chart will always look thinner than they eventually turn out to be. Even allowing for that lag, the pullback from legacy imaging OEMs is broad enough — spanning multiple large assignees simultaneously — to read as a genuine slowdown in core hardware filing rather than a reporting artefact.
Filing trend and technology composition
21,525 patent families sit inside this search, spanning receiving offices from the USPTO through EPO, WIPO, Japan, China and the UK.
A decade of front-loaded filing
917 families in 2017 rose to a peak of 931 in 2019, then eased to 665 by the 2022 midpoint. The partial count of 25 for the most recent year is an undercount pending the usual 18-month publication lag, but the direction across the full window is flat to declining rather than expansionary.
Measurement and magnet hardware dominate the IPC mix
G01R (17,800 records) and A61B (10,368) anchor the corpus. H01F magnet/inductor hardware (1,325) and G06T image processing (1,126) trail well behind, with G01V geophysics crossover (1,002), G01N material analysis (740), A61K medicinal preparations (664) and A61N electrotherapy (577) forming a long, thin tail of adjacent claim territory.
Shares are the percentage of the 21,525 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Magnetic Resonance Imaging Technology with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about magnetic resonance imaging technology and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaThe most-cited prior art and a representative recent filing
US20210405139A1 — Energizing and discharging a superconducting magnet of an MRI system
A magnetic resonance imaging system includes a superconducting magnet assembly with a superconducting field coil generating a stationary uniform main magnetic field, a gradient system with a gradient coil and gradient amplifier, and a switch assembly that galvanically couples the field coil to the gradient amplifier — allowing the superconducting magnet to be energized and discharged in an easy, cost-efficient way.Filed by Koninklijke Philips N.V., published 2021-12-30.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US4989608A | Device construction and method facilitating magnetic resonance imaging of foreign objects in a body | 866 |
| 2 | US20050054910A1 | Optical image-based position tracking for magnetic resonance imaging applications | 447 |
| 3 | US4945478A | Noninvasive medical imaging system and method for the identification and 3-D display of atherosclerosis and t… | 423 |
| 4 | US5560360A | Image neurography and diffusion anisotropy imaging | 420 |
| 5 | US6198957B1 | Radiotherapy machine including magnetic resonance imaging system | 405 |
| 6 | US6304769B1 | Magnetically directable remote guidance systems, and methods of use thereof | 381 |
| 7 | US5699801A | Method of internal magnetic resonance imaging and spectroscopic analysis and associated apparatus | 375 |
| 8 | US6675033B1 | Magnetic resonance imaging guidewire probe | 351 |
| 9 | US20200085382A1 | Automated lesion detection, segmentation, and longitudinal identification | 350 |
| 10 | US6606513B2 | Magnetic resonance imaging transseptal needle antenna | 345 |
Citation counts favour older filings simply because they have had longer to accumulate citations inside the searched corpus — read them as a signal of influence on later filers, not as a ranking of current technical importance.
Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
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Browse MCP servers →What the numbers mean for a filing decision
Three patterns matter more than the headline family count: where claim density sits, how concentrated ownership is, and how fast that concentration is dissolving.
Hardware measurement claims outweigh diagnostic-use claims
Nearly twice as many records sit in electric/magnetic measurement (G01R) as in diagnosis and surgery (A61B). New entrants competing purely on clinical workflow or diagnostic software face a thinner prior-art field than those trying to patent gradient coil or field-measurement improvements.
The curve has flattened since 2019
Family counts eased from the 2019 peak through the 2022 midpoint well before the reporting lag could explain it. Combined with the assignee pullback below, this reads as a maturing hardware base rather than an emerging one.
Legacy OEMs have stopped filing at their historic pace
Philips is down 95% year-on-year and Canon Medical down 96%; Toshiba, GE, Toshiba Medical Systems and Hitachi Medical all show zero families in the latest year. The co-assignee pairing between Toshiba and Toshiba Medical Systems (744 shared families) reflects a corporate restructuring already reflected in the record, not new joint activity.
Filing is US-anchored with a thin China footprint
The United States accounts for close to half of all receiving-office activity in this set, well ahead of Europe, WIPO and Japan. China's 786 filings and the UK's 577 are comparatively small, which is worth weighing before assuming global coverage from a US or EPO family alone.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to magnetic resonance imaging technology, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who is still active, and who has stepped back
Ownership in this corpus concentrates around a small group of imaging OEMs, but the momentum data shows that concentration cooling rather than hardening.
Consolidated portfolios, largely dormant
The strongest co-assignee pairing in the dataset links Toshiba to Toshiba Medical Systems, reflecting a single consolidated portfolio rather than active joint filing. Both entities show zero families in the latest year.
Still filing, but at a fraction of prior volume
Philips and its IP-holding affiliate Philips Intellectual Property & Standards form the second-strongest co-assignee pair (131 shared families), and Philips also pairs with Philips GmbH (55 families). The representative filing in this dataset is a Philips superconducting-magnet patent, but the latest-year count has dropped sharply from prior volume.
Canon Medical is filing, but momentum is fading fast
Canon Medical Systems is the only other assignee with any activity recorded in the latest year, at a single family — down 96% from the prior year. No assignee in this set is filing at anything close to historic peak pace.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Koninklijke Philips N.V. | 2 | -95% |
| Canon Medical Systems Corporation | 1 | -96% |
| Toshiba Corporation | 0 | — |
| General Electric Company | 0 | — |
| Toshiba Medical Systems Corporation | 0 | — |
| Hitachi Medical Corporation | 0 | — |
| GE Medical Systems Global Technology Company, LLC | 0 | — |
| Siemens Healthcare GmbH | 0 | — |
Where to take this from here
The filing data points to a hardware category past its peak, with claim space still open in a few specific adjacent branches.
Screen the under-claimed branches before drafting
Acceleration-factor reconstruction, gradient coil thermal management and quench protection all sit outside the dense G01R/A61B core. A freedom-to-operate check on these specific branches is more useful than one run against the whole corpus.
Explore white space in EurekaTrack the surviving filers, not the historic leaders
Toshiba, GE and Hitachi Medical have effectively stopped filing in this set. Canon Medical and Philips remain the only assignees with any latest-year activity, so competitive monitoring should weight toward them rather than toward historic portfolio size.
Set up assignee monitoring in EurekaCommon questions about MRI patent activity
Ownership in this corpus concentrates around a small group of imaging OEMs, historically led by Toshiba (including its consolidated Toshiba Medical Systems portfolio), Philips, GE, Canon Medical and Hitachi Medical. However, recent-year filing counts show most of these assignees at or near zero, so historic portfolio size is a poor guide to who is actively expanding coverage today. Philips and Canon Medical are the only two names in this dataset with any recorded activity in the latest year, and both are down sharply year-on-year.
No — filings peaked at 931 families in 2019, eased to 665 by 2022, and the partial latest-year count of 25 continues that downward trend even after allowing for the roughly 18-month lag between filing and publication. The pattern across the full 2017-2026 window is flat to declining rather than expansionary. This suggests the core hardware claim space — gradient coils, superconducting magnets, pulse sequence control — is largely staked out rather than still being actively contested.
Electric and magnetic measurement (IPC class G01R) is the largest single category at 17,800 records, ahead of diagnosis and surgery (A61B) at 10,368. Magnet and inductor hardware (H01F), image data processing (G06T), geophysics crossover (G01V), material analysis (G01N), medicinal preparations (A61K) and electrotherapy (A61N) form a much thinner tail. Anyone assuming MRI patenting is mostly about diagnostic software or clinical use should note that hardware and measurement claims outnumber it substantially.
The branches with comparatively thin record counts relative to the dense measurement and diagnostic core include parallel-imaging acceleration-factor optimisation, gradient coil thermal management, AI-assisted pulse sequence reconstruction, superconducting magnet quench protection and hybrid MRI-radiotherapy coil integration. These sit adjacent to well-covered claim territory rather than replacing it, so a first claim there should be drafted narrowly around the specific mechanism rather than the broad MRI system architecture, which is heavily prior-arted.
Citation counts accumulate over time inside a searched corpus, so older filings such as the 866-citation US4989608A have simply had more years to be cited by later applicants. This makes citation count a useful signal of historical influence on how the field developed, but not a reliable indicator of which claims matter most for a filing decision made today. Newer, less-cited filings — including recent superconducting magnet and gradient control patents — can still block current work even with low citation counts.
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Disclaimer. This page is generated from Patsnap Eureka data drawn from a limited snapshot of global patent and scientific-literature records, and is provided for general information and reference only.
Patent data carries inherent limitations: recent filings (typically the most recent 18–24 months) are under-counted due to standard publication lag; counts may be reported at either a patent-family or a patent-record basis and are not always directly comparable; classification, applicant-name, and citation data may contain errors, duplicates, or omissions; and the underlying search query defines and constrains the scope shown. As a result, the analysis may be incomplete or inaccurate and may not reflect the full technology landscape.
Nothing on this page constitutes an exhaustive prior-art, novelty, freedom-to-operate, or validity search, nor does it constitute legal, financial, investment, or professional advice, and it should not be relied upon as such. Any patent, commercial, or strategic decision should be verified independently and reviewed with qualified patent, legal, and domain professionals. Patsnap makes no warranties, express or implied, as to the accuracy, completeness, or fitness for any particular purpose of the information presented.
Machine translation. Assignee and organisation names originally recorded in Chinese, Japanese or Korean have been rendered into English by an AI translation step so that the tables stay readable. These renderings are best-effort and may not match a company’s registered English name; the original name is what the underlying patent record carries, and it is what any Eureka query launched from this page uses.