Dark band artifact in transcranial MR-guided focused ultrasound: Mechanism and mitigation with passive crossed wire antennas

Abstract

Current FDA-approved transcranial MR-guided focused ultrasound (tcMRgFUS) transducers cause a curved dark band in 3 T brain images that runs through midbrain targets of ablative treatments for essential tremor and other applications, and signal is reduced by at least 25% elsewhere in the brain. This limits the set of scans that can be performed to guide and assess the effects of treatment. An electromagnetic simulation study was performed to elucidate the mechanisms causing the dark band. Based on the results, a pair of passive antennas in a “propeller-beanie” configuration were designed to manipulate the reflected waves to avoid signal cancellation within the brain. The antennas were optimized and validated with in-vivo experiments and hydrophone measurements. The simulation study revealed that the dark band is caused by RF waves reflected from the transducer's ground plane, which cancel with incoming waves from the scanner's body coil. The passive antennas shifted the dark band out of the brain and increased transmit efficiency in the center of brain 2.3 times while improving field homogeneity by 50%. They also increased receive sensitivity and SNR in anatomic and temperature imaging. They caused no detectable distortion in hydrophone-measured focal pressure profiles. The conductive ground planes and coupling media used in tcMRgFUS and other piezoelectric FUS transducers interact with a 3 T scanner's RF fields to reduce transmit efficiency and SNR. For tcMRgFUS scenario, “propeller beanie” passive reflecting antennas alleviated these effects. This could make a broader set of imaging sequences available to guide tcMRgFUS treatment.