Hospitals depend on helium primarily to keep MRI machines running. Every MRI scanner contains a superconducting magnet that must be cooled to extreme temperatures, and liquid helium is the only substance cold enough to do the job. Beyond imaging, helium plays smaller but important roles in respiratory therapy, certain surgeries, and specialized brain-scanning equipment.
MRI Machines Need Extreme Cold
The single biggest reason hospitals need helium is magnetic resonance imaging. Inside every MRI scanner sits a powerful superconducting magnet, typically wound from a metal alloy that only becomes superconducting (meaning it conducts electricity with zero resistance) when cooled to around 4.2 Kelvin. That’s roughly minus 269°C, or just a few degrees above absolute zero. At that temperature, electrical current flows through the magnet indefinitely, generating the strong, stable magnetic field needed to produce detailed images of soft tissue, organs, and joints.
Liquid helium is the only readily available substance that stays liquid at these temperatures. No other cooling agent comes close. A single MRI unit requires approximately 2,000 liters of liquid helium to keep its magnet at operating temperature. While the helium slowly boils off over time and needs periodic topping up, the magnet essentially sits in a bath of liquid helium around the clock, whether the scanner is actively imaging a patient or not. If the helium runs out, the magnet warms up in an event called a “quench,” which can damage the equipment and take the scanner offline for days or weeks.
Breathing Easier With Helium-Oxygen Mixtures
Helium also shows up in emergency and critical care settings as a breathing gas. When mixed with oxygen in a blend called heliox (typically 80% helium and 20% oxygen), it creates a gas mixture that is about six times less dense than normal air while having a similar viscosity. That combination changes the physics of airflow inside narrowed or swollen airways.
In conditions like severe asthma attacks, croup in children, or upper airway obstruction, the passages that carry air into the lungs become constricted. When a patient tries to force air through these tight spaces, the flow becomes turbulent, which dramatically increases the effort needed to breathe. Because heliox is so much lighter than air, it converts that turbulent flow into smooth, laminar flow. The result is lower airway resistance, meaning the patient can move air in and out of their lungs with less work. Heliox is typically delivered through a face mask and can serve as a bridge treatment while other therapies take effect. It works best when patients don’t need high concentrations of supplemental oxygen, since the helium needs to make up at least 60% of the mixture to provide a meaningful benefit.
Specialized Brain Imaging Equipment
Some large medical centers use magnetoencephalography (MEG), a technology that maps brain activity by detecting the extremely faint magnetic fields produced by neurons firing. These signals are billions of times weaker than Earth’s magnetic field, so detecting them requires sensors called SQUIDs (superconducting quantum interference devices) that, like MRI magnets, only work at temperatures near absolute zero. MEG systems house these sensors in a container called a dewar that must be kept filled with liquid helium and carefully monitored for boil-off rates. While far less common than MRI, MEG is used in presurgical planning for epilepsy and brain tumor cases, making its helium supply clinically important for the hospitals that have it.
A Role in Some Laparoscopic Surgeries
During minimally invasive abdominal surgery, surgeons inflate the abdomen with gas to create working space. Carbon dioxide is the standard choice, but it gets absorbed into the bloodstream and can cause a buildup of CO2 in the blood, along with increased acidity. This becomes a particular concern in lengthy procedures on high-risk patients, such as those undergoing laparoscopic gastric bypass. In animal studies modeling this surgery, helium insufflation cut peak blood CO2 levels nearly in half compared to carbon dioxide (about 53 mmHg versus 100 mmHg). Because helium is inert and doesn’t get absorbed the way CO2 does, blood chemistry also returned to normal faster after surgery. This application remains niche, but it illustrates how helium’s chemical inertness gives it value beyond cooling.
Why Supply Shortages Hit Hospitals Hard
Helium isn’t manufactured. It forms underground over millions of years through radioactive decay and is extracted as a byproduct of natural gas production. The global supply depends on a handful of extraction facilities, and when those go offline, the effects ripple quickly. Between 2022 and 2024, a period dubbed “Helium Shortage 4.0,” shutdowns at a major Russian processing plant and the depletion of the U.S. Federal Helium Reserve combined to push prices up by more than 100%. Hospitals found themselves competing for the same limited supply as semiconductor manufacturers and aerospace companies.
For a hospital with multiple MRI scanners, helium isn’t optional. A shortage doesn’t just raise costs; it threatens to take critical diagnostic equipment offline entirely. Some facilities have responded by investing in helium recovery systems that capture the gas as it boils off and recondense it back into liquid form, achieving recovery rates above 94%. MRI manufacturers are also developing new magnet designs that use high-temperature superconductors capable of operating at 20 Kelvin instead of 4 Kelvin. These magnets could potentially run without any liquid helium at all, relying on mechanical coolers instead. That shift is still in progress, but it reflects how seriously the industry takes the vulnerability of depending on a finite, non-renewable resource for everyday medical imaging.