WACO, Texas—On the brink of closure just five years ago, the Waco Veterans Affairs Hospital on Tuesday unveiled a $3.5 million mobile MRI unit as part of its cutting-edge post-traumatic stress disorder research program.

The machine will be used at Fort Hood in nearby Killeen, one of the nation’s largest Army posts, and at VA hospitals in Waco and Temple. In one study, soldiers’ brains will be scanned immediately before and after their deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan.

“This means that thousands of veterans, not just here in Central Texas but across the country, are going to get the health care they desperately need ... after paying the very high price for their service to this country,” said U.S. Rep. Chet Edwards, D-Waco, chairman of the Military Construction and Veterans Affairs Appropriations Subcommittee.

The Waco VA is one of three nationwide that has a research program studying PTSD and traumatic brain injury. Texas A&M University’s psychiatry department is a partner in the program, called the Center of Excellence for Research on Returning War Veterans.

Some 10,000 veterans have enrolled in the Central Texas VA system after serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, and 15 percent to 30 percent have PTSD, so the center plans to study them over time and determine the best treatment, said Keith Young, the center’s director of neuroimaging and genetics.

A key part of the center’s studies will now include the MRI machine, in a trailer decorated with VA logos, which is 30,000 times stronger than the pull of the earth and capable of erasing credit cards, Young said. Its pictures are higher quality than other such machines, allowing doctors to see brain images more clearly, Young said.

It is one of three nationwide, and the only one that is mobile.

Tim Shea, the VA network director, called the MRI unit “unprecedented” and said the research being done would provide help and hope for so many troops returning home and trying to transition back to civilian life.

Last year the number of troops with new cases of PTSD jumped by roughly 50 percent. Army statistics showed nearly 14,000 new cases were diagnosed across the services in 2007 compared with more than 9,500 new cases the previous year and 1,632 in 2003.

Records show about 40,000 troops have been diagnosed with the illness since 2003, although officials believe that many more victims are being secretive about their illness.

Waco VA officials said the new MRI machine and PTSD program are even more significant considering the hospital’s near closure.

The Waco facility, which opened in 1932 on a sprawling tree-lined campus with dozens of red-brick buildings totaling more than 700,000 square feet, was one of seven nationwide recommended for closure by a VA commission. A 2003 government report said veterans hospitals weren’t being run efficiently.

But area residents, veterans and lawmakers rallied to keep it open. A community task force was created to discuss options for the facility, such as how to use some vacant VA buildings. Hundreds attended hearings on the matter, and in 2003 a group of veterans rode motorcycles from Waco to nearby Crawford, when President Bush was on vacation at his ranch, to protest the proposed closure.

A federally appointed panel recommended in 2005 that its services should be expanded rather than transferred. VA Secretary Jim Nicholson made the final decision to keep the Waco VA open in 2006.