Article ID | Journal | Published Year | Pages | File Type |
---|---|---|---|---|
5491362 | Magnetic Resonance Imaging | 2018 | 6 Pages |
Abstract
A four-channel Tic-Tac-Toe (TTT) transmit RF coil was designed and constructed for foot and ankle imaging at 7T MRI. Numerical simulations using an in-house developed FDTD package and experimental analyses using a homogenous phantom show an excellent agreement in terms of B1+ field distribution and s-parameters. Simulations performed on an anatomically detailed human lower leg model demonstrated an B1+ field distribution with a coefficient of variation (CV) of 23.9%/15.6%/28.8% and average B1+ of 0.33 μT/0.56 μT/0.43 μT for 1 W input power (i.e., 0.25 W per channel) in the ankle/calcaneus/mid foot respectively. In-vivo B1+ mapping shows an average B1+ of 0.29 μT over the entire foot/ankle. This newly developed RF coil also presents acceptable levels of average SAR (0.07 W/kg for 10 g per 1 W of input power) and peak SAR (0.34 W/kg for 10 g per 1 W of input power) over the whole lower leg. Preliminary in-vivo images in the foot/ankle were acquired using the T2-DESS MRI sequence without the use of a dedicated receive-only array.
Related Topics
Physical Sciences and Engineering
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Condensed Matter Physics
Authors
Tales Santini, Junghwan Kim, Sossena Wood, Narayanan Krishnamurthy, Nadim Farhat, Carlos Maciel, Shailesh B. Raval, Tiejun Zhao, Tamer S. Ibrahim,