Meeting Banner
Abstract #1491

A 32 Channel Receive-Only 3T Array Optimized for Brain and Cervical Spine Imaging

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.

Keywords