title: Custom-fitted 16-channel bilateral breast coil for bidirectional parallel imaging.
abstract: A 16-channel receive-only, closely fitted array coil is described and tested in vivo for bilateral breast imaging at 3 T. The primary purpose of this coil is to provide high signal-to-noise ratio and parallel imaging acceleration in two directions for breast MRI. Circular coil elements (7.5-cm diameter) were placed on a closed "cup-shaped" platform, and nearest neighbor coils were decoupled through geometric overlap. Comparisons were made between the 16-channel custom coil and a commercially available 8-channel coil. SENSitivity Encoding (SENSE) parallel imaging noise amplification (g-factor) was evaluated in phantom scans. In healthy volunteers, we compared signal-to-noise ratio, parallel imaging in one and two directions, Autocalibrating Reconstruction for Cartesian sampling (ARC) g-factor, and high spatial resolution imaging. When compared with a commercially available 8-channel coil, the 16-channel custom coil shows 3.6× higher mean signal-to-noise ratio in the breast and higher quality accelerated images. In patients, the 16-channel custom coil has facilitated high-quality, high-resolution images with bidirectional acceleration of R = 6.3.
authors.affiliation: Department of Radiology, Stanford University, Stanford, California, USA. nnewihe@stanford.edu
authors.forename: Anderson N
authors.initials: AN
authors.lastname: Nnewihe
authors.forename: Thomas
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Grafendorfer
authors.forename: Bruce L
authors.initials: BL
authors.lastname: Daniel
authors.forename: Paul
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Calderon
authors.forename: Marcus T
authors.initials: MT
authors.lastname: Alley
authors.forename: Fraser
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Robb
authors.forename: Brian A
authors.initials: BA
authors.lastname: Hargreaves
mesh_terms: D001940:Breast / Q000473:pathology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging / Q000295:instrumentation* / Q000379:methods*; D012015:Reference Standards; D059629:Signal-To-Noise Ratio