Azma Mareyam1, Julien Cohen-Adad1,
James N. Blau1, Jonathan R. Polimeni1, Boris Keil1,
Lawrence L. Wald1,2
1A. A. Martinos Center for Biomedical
Imaging, Dept. of Radiology, Masschussetts General Hospital, Charlestown, MA,
United States; 2Division of Health Sciences and Technology,
Harvard-MIT, Cambridge, MA, United States
Imaging
of the cervical spinal cord along with the brain is crucial for the study of
such pathologies as multiple sclerosis. Progress, however, is impeded by
distortion and susceptibility artifacts, due to the cord's small size and to
adjacent B0 inhomogeneities. We designed and built a new, highly-parallel 32
channel coil array to provide sufficient resolution, SNR and acceleration for
imaging the brain, brainstem, and cervical vertebrae. Characterization of the
coil showed SNR and acceleration improvement over existing Siemens head, neck
and spine coils in this region.