Resonant Mode Reduction in Radiofrequency Volume Coils for Ultrahigh Field Magnetic Resonance Imaging

Materials

Yong Pang¹  Zhentian Xie¹  Ye Li¹  Duan Xu¹  Daniel Vigneron¹ 

[1] Department of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging, University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, CA 94158, USA; E-Mails:

关键词: Finite-Difference Time-Domain;    common-mode;    microstrip;    Magnetic Resonance Imaging;    high field;   

DOI  :  10.3390/ma4081333

来源: mdpi

【 摘 要 】

In a multimodal volume coil, only one mode can generate homogeneous Radiofrequency (RF) field for Magnetic Resonance Imaging. The existence of other modes may increase the volume coil design difficulties and potentially decreases coil performance. In this study, we introduce common-mode resonator technique to high and ultrahigh field volume coil designs to reduce the resonant mode while maintain the homogeneity of the RF field. To investigate the design method, the common-mode resonator was realized by using a microstrip line which was split along the central to become a pair of parallel transmission lines within which common-mode currents exist. Eight common-mode resonators were placed equidistantly along the circumference of a low loss dielectric cylinder to form a volume coil. Theoretical analysis and comparison between the 16-strut common-mode volume coil and a conventional 16-strut volume coil in terms of RF field homogeneity and efficiency was performed using Finite-Difference Time-Domain (FDTD) method at 298.2 MHz. MR imaging experiments were performed by using a prototype of the common-mode volume coil on a whole body 7 Tesla scanner. FDTD simulation results showed the reduced number of resonant modes of the common-mode volume coil over the conventional volume coil, while the RF field homogeneity of the two type volume coils was kept at the same level. MR imaging of a water phantom and a kiwi fruit showing the feasibility of the proposed method for simplifying the volume coil design is also presented.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© 2011 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.