Hospitals rely on helium for several critical functions, from keeping MRI machines running to helping patients breathe during severe asthma attacks. The single largest use is cooling the superconducting magnets inside MRI scanners, but helium also plays important roles in respiratory therapy, lung function testing, cryosurgery, and an emerging form of cancer radiation treatment.
Cooling MRI Magnets
The biggest consumer of helium in any hospital is the MRI department. MRI scanners work by generating extremely powerful magnetic fields, and the superconducting coils that produce those fields only function at temperatures near absolute zero. Liquid helium bathes the coils at around 4 Kelvin, which is roughly –450°F. No other substance stays liquid at that temperature, making helium irreplaceable for this job.
A single MRI machine holds about 1,700 liters of liquid helium, and the liquid slowly boils off over time, requiring regular top-ups. If the helium supply runs out and the magnet warms up in an uncontrolled event called a “quench,” repairs can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, or the hospital may lose a system worth several million. Beyond the financial hit, losing an MRI scanner disrupts patient care for weeks.
Hospitals with specialized brain imaging equipment are especially vulnerable. At UCSF, a single magnetoencephalography (MEG) scanner used for pre-surgical brain mapping accounts for 45 percent of the entire institution’s helium consumption. If that scanner goes offline, surgeons either delay procedures, send patients to the only other MEG system in southern California, or operate without a detailed brain map.
Respiratory Therapy With Heliox
When a patient arrives in the emergency department with a severe asthma attack or a badly narrowed airway, breathing itself becomes exhausting. The muscles involved in each breath have to force air through constricted passages, and the turbulence created by that effort makes things worse. This is where a helium-oxygen blend called heliox comes in.
Helium’s density is dramatically lower than nitrogen, the gas that makes up most of normal air. Swapping nitrogen for helium reduces the turbulence inside narrowed airways, which lowers resistance and cuts the physical work of breathing. Standard heliox mixtures contain 60 to 70 percent helium and 30 to 40 percent oxygen. Patients breathe the mix through a mask, and the effect can be rapid. In studies of patients with acute severe asthma and dangerously high carbon dioxide levels, heliox quickly improved ventilation in the emergency department, buying time for other treatments to take hold.
Heliox is also used in intensive care units for patients with COPD flare-ups and other conditions that spike airway resistance. It doesn’t treat the underlying disease. Instead, it reduces the energy cost of breathing while medications do their work.
Measuring Lung Capacity
Pulmonary function labs use helium to measure how much air remains in the lungs after a normal exhale, a value called functional residual capacity. The test works on a simple dilution principle: a patient breathes in a known concentration of helium from a closed system, and because helium doesn’t cross from the lungs into the bloodstream, technicians can calculate the lung volume based on how much the helium concentration drops. This measurement helps diagnose restrictive lung diseases and track how conditions like pulmonary fibrosis progress over time.
Freezing Tumors With Cryoablation
In cryosurgery, doctors insert a thin probe directly into a tumor and destroy it through extreme temperature swings. The freezing phase uses argon gas, which can drop the probe tip to –150°C or colder. Helium handles the opposite job: when it expands rapidly through the probe, it rewarms the tissue to 20–40°C within minutes. A typical cycle alternates 10 minutes of freezing with 2 minutes of helium-driven rewarming. The rapid shift between extreme cold and warmth causes the tumor cells to rupture and die. This technique is used for tumors in the liver, kidney, prostate, and soft tissues, often when traditional surgery would be too risky.
Helium Ion Radiation Therapy
A newer and still limited application involves firing beams of helium ions at tumors. Like proton therapy, helium ion beams deposit most of their energy at a precise depth, sparing surrounding tissue. But helium ions are heavier than protons, which gives them a tighter, more focused dose profile. In planning studies for pediatric brain tumors, helium ion beams reduced radiation exposure to critical brain structures by up to 39 percent compared to proton therapy alone. That difference matters most in children, whose developing brains are particularly sensitive to stray radiation. Only a handful of centers worldwide currently offer helium ion therapy, but the dosimetric advantages are driving interest in expanding access.
Supply Shortages and Hospital Preparedness
Helium is a non-renewable resource extracted from natural gas reserves, and global supply has been unreliable for over a decade. Hospitals have faced repeated shortages as suppliers prioritize higher-paying industrial customers and government contracts. During these crunches, imaging departments are forced to ration helium, delay equipment maintenance, or risk costly shutdowns.
Some institutions are responding with closed-loop recovery systems that capture helium as it boils off and re-liquefy it for reuse. McGill University installed a system for its MEG scanner that recovers 100 percent of the helium in a closed loop, eliminating the need for twice-weekly deliveries of 5,000 liters per year. The system also cut the associated transportation emissions to zero. Newer MRI designs from major manufacturers are moving toward sealed magnet systems that use far less helium or recycle it internally, reducing a hospital’s dependence on a volatile supply chain.
UCSF, after years of supply disruptions, restructured its procurement and conservation strategies so that the institution now needs only a small fraction of its historic helium usage. For hospitals that depend on MRI, MEG, and other helium-cooled equipment, building this kind of resilience has become an operational priority rather than an afterthought.