A Simple and Accurate Method for 13C Coil Sensitivity Estimation

Giulio Giovannetti¹, Francesca Frijia², Luca Menichetti¹, Maria Filomena Santarelli¹, Valentina Hartwig¹, Luigi Landini³, Massimo Lombardi²

Hyperpolarization methods have been proposed to enhance the polarization of nuclear spins such as 13C. Efficient imaging of such molecules requires new multifrequency coils. However, when the coil are tuned at lower frequency with respect to 1H frequency, such as for 13C experiments, the SNR decreases. Since the SNR performance increases as the sensitivity of the coils it is important to estimate this parameter for an optimized coil design. The purpose of this work is to verify the accuracy of perturbing spheres method for coil sensitivity estimation, by testing two 13C birdcages and demonstrating its efficacy for coil sensitivity estimation.