Hunter R. Underhill1,2, Chun Yuan1,
Cecil E. Hayes1
1Radiology, University of Washington,
Seattle, WA, United States; 2Bioengineering, University of
Washington, Seattle, WA, United States
In
this study, a novel coil design, subsequently referred to as the rat brain
coil, is described which exploits and combines the strengths of both
solenoids and surface coils into a simple, multi-channel, receive-only coil
dedicated to whole-brain rat imaging on a 3.0 T clinical MR scanner. Compared to other coils, the rat brain coil
improved SNR by a minimum of 60%. Improvement in SNR afforded by the rat
brain coil may broaden applications and experiments that utilize clinical MR
scanners for in vivo image acquisition.