MRI Coil Stability

Selaka Bandara Bulumulla¹, Wolfgang Loew², Christopher J. Hardy¹

MRI receiver chains that are carefully tuned and matched to operate at the Larmor frequency are often prone to oscillations at other, nearby frequencies. These oscillations degrade image quality, yet isolating and eliminating oscillations is a challenge in large arrays, and significantly add to development cycle. In this work, we develop methods to analyze and predict the stability of coil arrays given preamp data, coil/balun/feedboard circuits and geometry. The method is used to predict the stability of a coil array at the Larmor and nearby frequencies, for varying conditions of coil loading and preamp termination, and compared with experimental results.