An optimized head coil design for MR imaging at 0.15 T.
Receive-only head coils employing a modified solenoid design were developed for a 0.15-T imager with horizontal main static and radiofrequency transmit fields. This coil design uses three or five identical horseshoe-shaped elements, constructed of 1/2-in. outside diameter copper tubing, lying one above the other in equally spaced horizontal planes. Coils of this design were compared to the half-saddle coil supplied with our imager and to the Hammersmith Hospital spherical coil (G.M. Bydder et al., J. Comput. Assist. Tomogr. 9, 987 (1985]. Compared to the half-saddle coil, one of our new head coils has the same field of view while improving the signal-to-noise ratio (S/N) by 80% in the upper brain and 20% in the cervical vertebrae; compared to the spherical coil the S/N was up to 60% lower but the field of view was larger and patient comfort was better.
Marrocco
B J
BJ
Department of Physics, University of Western Ontario, London, Canada.
Drost
D J
DJ
Prato
F S
FS
D001921:Brain / Q000033:anatomy & histology; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging / Q000295:instrumentation*