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Comparison of three commercially available radio frequency coils for human brain imaging at 3 Tesla

Mekle, Ralf ; van der Zwaag, Wietske ; Joosten, Andreas ; Gruetter, Rolf

In: Magnetic Resonance Materials in Physics, Biology and Medicine, 2008, vol. 21, no. 1-2, p. 53-61

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    Title
    • Comparison of three commercially available radio frequency coils for human brain imaging at 3 Tesla
    Author
    • Mekle, Ralf. Centre d'Imagerie BioMedicale (CIBM), Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL), EPFL SB IPMC LIFMET, CH F0 572 (Batiment CH), Station 6, 1015, Lausanne, Switzerland
    • van der Zwaag, Wietske. Centre d'Imagerie BioMedicale (CIBM), Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL), EPFL SB IPMC LIFMET, CH F0 572 (Batiment CH), Station 6, 1015, Lausanne, Switzerland
    • Joosten, Andreas. Laboratory for Functional and Metabolic Imaging (LIFMET), Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL), Lausanne, Switzerland
    • Gruetter, Rolf. Centre d'Imagerie BioMedicale (CIBM), Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL), EPFL SB IPMC LIFMET, CH F0 572 (Batiment CH), Station 6, 1015, Lausanne, Switzerland
    Document Type
    • Postprint
    Language
    • English
    Published in
    • Magnetic Resonance Materials in Physics, Biology and Medicine, 2008, vol. 21, no. 1-2, p. 53-61. Springer-Verlag
    Other Version
    OAI-PMH Identifier
    • oai:doc.rero.ch:320968
    Summary
    Objective: To evaluate a transverse electromagnetic (TEM), a circularly polarized (CP) (birdcage), and a 12-channel phased array head coil at the clinical field strength of B 0 = 3T in terms of signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), signal homogeneity, and maps of the effective flip angle α. Materials and methods: SNR measurements were performed on low flip angle gradient echo images. In addition, flip angle maps were generated for αnominal= 30° using the double angle method. These evaluation steps were performed on phantom and human brain data acquired with each coil. Moreover, the signal intensity variation was computed for phantom data using five different regions of interest. Results: In terms of SNR, the TEM coil performs slightly better than the CP coil, but is second to the smaller 12-channel coil for human data. As expected, both the TEM and the CP coils show superior image intensity homogeneity than the 12-channel coil, and achieve larger mean effective flip angles than the combination of body and 12-channel coil with reduced radio frequency power deposition. Conclusion: At 3T the benefits of TEM coil design over conventional lumped element(s) coil design start to emerge, though the phased array coil retains an advantage with respect to SNR performance