Anderson Nnewihe1,2, Thomas Grafendorfer3,4, Bruce Daniel1, Paul Calderon4, Marcus Alley, Brian Hargreaves1
1Radiology, Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA, USA; 2Bioengineering, Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA, USA; 3Electrical Engineering, Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA, USA; 4GE Healthcare, USA
Advances in MRI hardware and pulse sequences, specifically the phased array radiofrequency coil and parallel imaging, have improved our ability for fast, high resolution imaging of the breast, but there is still significant room for improvement. Due to their coil element placement, industrial coils only allow acceleration in the left/right (L/R) direction. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that a breast coil array optimized for acceleration in two directions in combination with parallel imaging pulse sequence design substantially reduce scan time without adding visible artifacts and maintaining similar SNR values.
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