Evaluation of High Temperature Superconducting (HTS) Coil Performance Gain for 3T Small Animal MR Imaging

Bobo Hu¹, Chris Randell², Colin Sunderland², Brett Haywood¹, Paul Glover¹

Estimation of the likely performance gain of the HTS coil requires accurate modelling of important coil sensitivity parameters such as loaded Q factor and SNR gain in MR imaging experiments. Firstly this work proposes an FDTD mesh based numerical mouse model which will accurately simulate a realistic loading effect on the HTS coil at 3T. Secondly, effective techniques are developed to assess the high Q factor and SNR gain of the HTS coil, and comparisons are made with that of the room temperature copper coil. Finally MR imaging experiments performed on room temperature copper coils demonstrate the accuracy of the method.