Parallel RF Transmission for Breast MRI at 3.0 Tesla: Preliminary Results

Christiane K. Kuhl¹, Guido Kukuk, Juergen Gieseke^1,2, Yvonne Mekes-Rijckaert², Hans H. Schild¹

Breast MRI at 3.0T has been shown to suffer from inhomogeneous RF transmission which results in heterogeneous T1-contrast across the field of view, in particular in large field-of-view, bilateral imaging protocols. The heterogeneous T1-contrast translates into variable enhancement of tumors, just depending on their location within the field of view. This has been a major reason why breast MRI at 3.0 T has only reluctantly been used in clinical practice. Breast Parallel RF transmission holds the promise of reducing dielectric resonance effects at high field strengths and enables control of RF distribution to optimize RF deposition. Parallel RF transmission has by now not been used or fully tested on clinical high-field MR systems. Our study demonstrates that parallel RF transmission in MR in breast imaging can effectively avoid B1-inhomogeneities.