Novel RF coil geometry for lower extremity imaging.
A receive-only phased-array coil was designed to image the lower extremities. The array consists of four volume coils placed on two cylindrical formers. The coil array has the ability to image both legs simultaneously over a 40 cm longitudinal field of view (FOV). Experiments using phantoms show an increase in signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) in regions of interest through the center of the coil by an average factor of 2.8 over the body coil and 1.5 over the GE 4-channel torso array. In vivo data acquired from 10 subjects show that the X array provided similar SNR improvement in spin-echo images and more vascular details in angiographic images compared to the torso array.
MR Research Center, Department of Radiology, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15213, USA.
Ryan
R
Brown
Azma
A
Mareyam
Eric
E
Reid
Yi
Y
Wang
D004867:Equipment Design; D006801:Humans; D007089:Image Enhancement / Q000295:instrumentation; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted; D007717:Knee / Q000033:anatomy & histology; D007866:Leg / Q000033:anatomy & histology*; D018810:Magnetic Resonance Angiography / Q000295:instrumentation; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging / Q000295:instrumentation*; D019047:Phantoms, Imaging; D012815:Signal Processing, Computer-Assisted; D018709:Statistics, Nonparametric; D013848:Thigh / Q000033:anatomy & histology; D013909:Thorax / Q000033:anatomy & histology