Effect of sensor positioning error on the accuracy of magnetic field mapping result for NMR/MRI

Abstract

Nowadays the magnetic field mapping is widely used in the design and analysis of the NMR/MRI magnet system, and the accuracy of mapping result has become more and more important. There are several factors affecting the accuracy of the mapping such as the mapping method, the precision of the sensor, the position of the measurement points, the calculation accuracy, and so on. In this paper the error due to the misalignment of the measurement points was discussed. The magnetic field in the central volume was mapped using an indirect method in an MRI magnet system and the magnetic field was fitted to a polynomial. Considering the misalignment between the original measurement points and the practical measurement points, there must be some errors in the mapping calculation and we called it positioning error. Several comparisons of the positioning error have been presented through the theoretical estimates and the exact magnetic field values. Finally, the allowable positioning errors were suggested to guarantee the accuracy of the magnetic field mapping within a certain degree for an example case.