Ryan Brown1, Guillaume Madelin1, Riccardo Lattanzi1, Gregory Chang1, Ravinder R. Regatte1, Daniel K. Sodickson1, Graham C. Wiggins1
1Radiology, New York University School of Medicine, New York, NY, United States
The critical design aim for a dual-tuned sodium/proton coil is to maximize sodium sensitivity and B1+ homogeneity while maintaining adequate proton sensitivity and homogeneity. We explored a nested-coil for sodium/proton imaging at 7T where a stand-alone eight-channel sodium receive array was implemented for high SNR, and a detunable transmit sodium birdcage and four-channel proton transmit-receive array were implemented with minimal disturbance to the sodium array by managing their respective resonances. in vivo sodium SNR was 1.2 to 1.7 times greater in the developed array over a mono-nuclear sodium birdcage coil.