High field volume coil with unbalance current distribution for MRI applications of rodents

Abstract

The development of transceiver volume coils for high field MRI is still a very dynamic field of investigation and development Temnikov has been recently proposed a new volume coil design, similar to the to the gradiometer coil. It is also claimed that it is possible to individually tune it with a single chip capacitor. This motivated the development of a coil prototype based on this idea for whole‐body MRI of rodents at 7 Tesla. Electromagnetic simulations of the RF field generated by this coil design were previously performed to study its properties. Electromagnetic simulations were also conducted for a standard birdcage coil with similar dimensions for fare comparison. In all numerical simulations, an unbalanced currents distribution was assumed by applying half the current intensity to designated legs. This coil design operated in the transceiver mode and was linear‐driven. The coil size was manufactured to accommodate small rodents. Numerical simulations showed a field uniformity improvement of our coil over the standard birdcage coil. A popular birdcage coil was also constructed to compare their performances. Phantom and rat images were acquired for both volume coils to prove the viability of this coil design for high field MRI applications and standard spin echo pulse sequences Thus, these preliminary results make this coil design a good candidate for MRI and MRS applications of high magnetic fields.