Benoit Schaller1, Watcharaphol Paritmongkol1, Arthur W Magill2, Matthew D Robson1, and Christopher T Rodgers1
1RDM Cardiovascular Medicine, University of Oxford, OXFORD, United Kingdom, 2Institute of Neuroscience and Medicine - 4, Forschungszentrum Juelich GmbH, Juelich, Germany
Phosphorus
spectroscopy is a powerful tool for cardiac metabolism studies. Working at 7T
gives a significant (2.8x) gain in SNR compared to 3T. However, with existing
RF coils, it is hard to excite the heart uniformly and with sufficient peak B1+.
In this work we simulated 8 candidate coil designs and identified the best one
for cardiac 31P-MRS. We built this quadrature pair of 15cm loops for
31P and a single 10cm loop for 1H, decoupled with LCC
traps, performed safety tests, validated its B1+ in
phantoms and recorded spectra in vivo in the human leg, liver and heart.
