Melvyn Boon King Ooi1, Sascha Krueger2, William J. Thomas3, Srirama V. Swaminathan4, Truman R. Brown1,3
1Biomedical Engineering, Columbia University, New York, USA; 2Philips Research Europe, Hamburg, Germany; 3Radiology, Columbia University, New York, USA; 4Philips Medical Systems, Cleveland, OH, USA
The ability to track the positions of multiple micro RF-coil in the MR system has been the foundation of recent advances in MR-guided medical devices, as well as motion detection and correction applications. The success of these marker-based tools is dependent upon the quality of the micro-coil position calculation. The current work presents a fully developed methodology consisting of a short tracking pulse-sequence and micro-coil hardware capable of high measurement accuracy and reproducibility in a temporal resolution suitable for use in real-time applications. The techniques efficacy is validated by a series of measurements in a well-defined grid-phantom.