Waveguide Magnetic Resonance Imaging at 3 Tesla

F Vazquez¹, R Martin¹, O Marrufo¹, Alfredo O. Rodriguez¹

Waveguides have been successfully used to generate magnetic resonance images at 7 Tesla for whole-body systems. From these results, it has been established that waveguides are only suitable for 7T systems with wide bores of al least 60 cm. This is mainly due to the cut-off frequency of the cylindrical waveguides used. To overcome this limitation a parallel-plate waveguide was employed since its cut-off frequency depends on the separation of the plates. A parallel-plate waveguide was built and used to acquire images of a healthy volunteers leg at 3 Tesla on a clinical MR imager.