Flexible Four Element Phased Array Coil for Supine Breast MRI

Peter Siegler¹, Gilbert Thevathasan², Cameron Piron², Helen Marshall¹, Patrick M. Devine¹, Donald Bruce Plewes¹

Dynamic contrast enhanced breast MRI shows a high sensitivity for breast cancer but is commonly done in a prone position which complicates its use for image-aided strategies. Recently, supine unilateral breast MRI with compensation for respiratory motion was successfully implemented. However, the first coil prototype was of a rigid design, which showed only moderate signal-to-noise (SNR) characteristics. Here, a flexible four-element receive coil was built with a fixation that allows a stable bending and rotation of the coil. This permits the changing the coil shape to match individual breast shapes substantially improving the SNR over the entire volume of interest.