Smaller, lighter, cheaper: A serial entrepreneur wants his portable MRI to transform medicine

In a nondescript building in this seaside town sits a prototype that could change the way that doctors use magnetic resonance imaging.

Usually an MRI machine requires a giant, powerful magnet and must be encased in its own copper-shielded room. It is why the behemoths cost hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars. But this device, from a startup called Hyperfine, is about the size of a luggage cart. It could be wheeled from one bed to another.