Multilayered receive coil produced using a non-planar photofabrication process for an intraluminal magnetic resonance imaging

An intraluminal probe coil is a promising signal detecting technique in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) for small pathological lesions: it may allow acquisition of relatively high resolution images while maintaining similar signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) compared with external coils. In the present work, multilayered, saddle-shaped intraluminal coils with outer diameters of approximately 2 mm were fabricated using a newly developed non-planar photofabrication technique. Single-, double- and quadruple-layered coils suitable for side-view scanning were prototyped and evaluated in terms of spatial resolution and SNR at 1.5 T. The coils generated intraluminal MR images with sufficient SNR and spatial resolution.