Comparison of Multi-Element RF Coil Designs for 3D Spatially Selective Excitation

Tim Nielsen¹, Peter Brnert¹, Ulrich Katscher¹, Ingmar Graesslin¹

Multi-element RF excitation is of high interest to accelerate RF pulses for spatially selective excitation. Coil design, i.e., the encoding capability of a transmit array, has a significant impact on the extent of pulse acceleration. We investigated the performance of different multi-element coil designs with a special focus on 3D excitation. The investigated RF coils consisted of 1 to 4 cylindrical segments with linear antennas oriented parallel to the main field direction and equally distributed around the circumference of each segment. Varying reduction factors and orientations of the trajectory in k-space were investigated.