title: Flexible transceiver array for ultrahigh field human MR imaging.
abstract: A flexible transceiver array, capable of multiple-purpose imaging applications in vivo at ultrahigh magnetic fields was designed, implemented and tested on a 7 T MR scanner. By alternately placing coil elements with primary and secondary harmonics, improved decoupling among coil elements was accomplished without requiring decoupling circuitry between resonant elements, which is commonly required in high-frequency transceiver arrays to achieve sufficient element-isolation during radiofrequency excitation. This flexible array design is capable of maintaining the required decoupling among resonant elements in different array size and geometry and is scalable in coil size and number of resonant elements (i.e., number of channels), yielding improved filling factors for various body parts with different geometry and size. To investigate design feasibility, flexibility, and array performance, a multichannel, 16-element transceiver array was designed and constructed, and in vivo images of the human head, knee, and hand were acquired using a whole-body 7 T MR system. Seven Tesla parallel imaging with generalized autocalibrating partially parallel acquisitions (GRAPPA) performed using this flexible transceiver array was also presented.
authors.affiliation: Department of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging, University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, California 94158, USA.
authors.forename: Bing
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Wu
authors.forename: Xiaoliang
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.forename: Chunsheng
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: Ye
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Li
authors.forename: Yong
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Pang
authors.forename: Jonathan
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Lu
authors.forename: Duan
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Xu
authors.forename: Sharmila
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Majumdar
authors.forename: Sarah J
authors.initials: SJ
authors.lastname: Nelson
authors.forename: Daniel B
authors.initials: DB
authors.lastname: Vigneron
mesh_terms: D004867:Equipment Design; D019544:Equipment Failure Analysis; D006801:Humans; D007089:Image Enhancement / Q000295:instrumentation*; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging / Q000295:instrumentation*; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012680:Sensitivity and Specificity; D014159:Transducers