Abstract #1900

A 7-Tesla Transmit with 15-Channel Receive-Only Array Knee Coil for Sodium Imaging

Matthew Finnerty¹, Xiaoyu Yang¹, Tsinghua Zheng¹, Jeremiah Heilman¹, Nicholas Castrilla¹, Joseph Herczak¹, Hiroyuki Fujita^1,2, Graham C. Wiggins³, Ryan Brown³, Guillaume Madelin³, Gregory Chang³, Ravinder R. Regatte³, Michael Recht³, Siegfried Trattnig⁴, Vladimir Juras⁴, Wolfgang Renz⁵, Franz Schmitt⁵, Bernd Stoeckel⁶, Andreas Potthast⁵, Karsten Wicklow⁵

¹Quality Electrodynamics, Mayfield Village, OH, United States; ²Departments of Physics & Radiology, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH, United States; ³Department of Radiology, NYU Langone Medical Center, New York, United States; ⁴Department of Radiology, Medical University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria; ⁵Siemens Healthcare, Erlangen, Germany; ⁶Siemens Medical Solutions USA, Inc., Malvern, PA, United States

The higher SNR found at 7T allows for more diagnostic applications for nuclei other than hydrogen. In particular, sodium imaging has been found to be useful in characterizing cartilage degeneration in the joints, with the focus primarily on the knee. In an effort to design RF coil hardware optimized for these x-nuclei applications, a 12-rung birdcage transmitter and 15-channel receive-only array coil has been developed for sodium imaging of the knee.