Abstract #1154

Optimization of geometry for combined RF/shim coil arrays for the spinal cord

Grégoire Germain¹, Jason Stockmann², Ryan Topfer¹, Lawrence L Wald^2,3, Nikola Stikov^1,4, and Julien Cohen-Adad^1,5

¹Institute of Biomedical Engineering, École Polytechnique de Montréal, Montréal, QC, Canada, ²Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Department of Radiology, Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Charlestown, MA, United States, ³Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, United States, ⁴Montreal Heart Institute, Université de Montréal, Montréal, QC, Canada, ⁵Functional Neuroimaging Unit, CRIUGM, Université de Montréal, Montréal, QC, Canada

Spatial variations of B₀ in the region of the spinal cord are known to cause many artifacts. Local combined RF/shim coil array could provide an alternative to spherical harmonic shim coil. Here, we simulated several realistic coil array geometries for spinal cord imaging and demonstrated that arrays of 16 coils could outperform 3^rd order spherical harmonic shimming in the ROI. Simulations also revealed that precise configurations for the coils can improve shimming performance without SNR loss.

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