In vivo MRI using liquid nitrogen cooled phased array coil at 3.0 T

A liquid nitrogen (LN2) cooled dual-channel array coil was designed and built for use on a 3.0-T whole-body scanner. In vivo imaging of a volunteer's fingers and imaging of a deceased mouse and oil phantom were performed using the LN2 cooled array and a similar room-temperature coil. Imaging results showed that the LN2 cooled array provides a signal-to-noise ratio gain of up to 240% as compared with its room-temperature counterpart. LN2 cooled arrays may be useful for high-resolution clinical imaging of joints, skin, eyes and peripheral vessels as well as for biomedical imaging of small animals in human disease modeling.