The new MRI scanner is extremely powerful

The new, Newcastle University Centre for Magnetic Resonance Studies at the city's General Hospital, houses the region's first �1.8m "super scanner".

The scanner is twice as powerful as those normally used in hospitals.

It will be used for hospital treatment and research projects into liver and heart disease, diabetes, dementia, cancer and muscular dystrophy.

Usually to look inside certain parts of the body, researchers and doctors have to "open up" and operate on patients, but now they can get better views without the need for invasive surgery.

Prof Roy Taylor, director of the centre, said: "The new scanner will show us how disease is affecting the body in great detail, improving our understanding and informing the developments of new treatments in years to come."