An optimization method for designing SENSE imaging RF coil arrays

An optimization method in RF coil array design for SENSE imaging is described. Using this method the optimized RF coil geometries can be calculated numerically given the required SENSE imaging performance. Although this method can be applied to optimize the RF coil arrays for both 1D and 2D SENSE imaging, to demonstrate the potential applications of this method, we designed RF coil arrays for 2D SENSE imaging and compared their performance by simulation. An optimized 4-channel receive-only RF coil array designed for 2D SENSE imaging was implemented and tested to demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed technique. Imaging results showed reasonable agreement with the simulations, thus the method can be applied to RF coil array designs for SENSE imaging when optimum imaging performance is desired.