A transmit/receive volume strip array and its mode mixing theory in MRI

MRI is increasingly moving towards higher magnetic field, prompting the need for multi-port transmit/receive RF coil arrays to overcome high-frequency limitations such as penetration depth and dielectric resonance effects. In this work, an arbitrary n-element transmit/receive volume strip array (VSA) and an associated mixing mode theory are described to understand the behavior of a multiple-port cyclic symmetrical VSA in both the physical port space and the complementary mode space; the relations between the two spaces are explicitly formulated. The advantage of mode-space analysis is that an arbitrary n×n impedance matrix which describes any VSA in port space can be diagonalized to a diagonal n×n matrix; thus an analytical solution of Kirchhoff's laws for the VSA becomes manageable when n is large. Based on such an analytical solution, we can (a) generate excitation profile of any desired mixed mode during transmission by manipulating external power sources without the need of physically tuning VSA to the mixed mode; (b) identify the sensitivity profiles of the complementary mode distributions during reception, which were unknown in quadrature and decoupled coils. Many predictions are rigidly verified by extensive test measurements from network analyzer and by MR imaging experiments.