1. A new RF transmit coil for foot and ankle imaging at 7T MRI.
- Author
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Santini, Tales, Kim, Junghwan, Wood, Sossena, Krishnamurthy, Narayanan, Farhat, Nadim, Maciel, Carlos, Raval, Shailesh, Zhao, Tiejun, and Ibrahim, Tamer S.
- Subjects
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FOOT , *RADIO frequency , *COMPUTER simulation , *FINITE difference time domain method , *IMAGING phantoms , *MAGNETIC resonance imaging - 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 B 1 + field distribution and s-parameters. Simulations performed on an anatomically detailed human lower leg model demonstrated an B 1 + field distribution with a coefficient of variation (CV) of 23.9%/15.6%/28.8% and average B 1 + 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 B 1 + mapping shows an average B 1 + 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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2018
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