A 16-Channel Rat-Body Array Coil with an Integrated Birdcage Transmitter at 7T

Martin Tabbert¹, Marco Motz¹, Marcos Lopez², Erhard Pfrommer¹, Sven Junge¹

With this study we present a novel 16 channel array-coil with a transmitter coil for investigations on rats which is optimized for rat abdominal imaging. Decoupling electronics, phase shifters and preamplifiers are included in the coil. The receive-signals are amplified with 16 built-in low-impedance preamplifiers. An insulating network that reduces the coil-coupling by additional 6dB was designed. Compared to a quadrature resonator, the coil shows an SNR improvement of the 16-channel coil in the center of a transversal slice by a factor of 1.1 up to 2.5 regarding the periphery of the VOI. All advantages of parallel imaging techniques on small animals can be utilised, e.g. rats can be examined in shorter times by using accelerated 2D/3D imaging.