Abstract #3878

Ultimate Intrinsic Signal-To-Noise Ratio of the Human Head at 9.4T

Jrg Felder¹, Nadim Joni Shah¹,²

¹Institute of Neuroscience & Medicine-4, Forschungszentrum Juelich GmbH, Juelich, NRW, Germany; ²Department of Neurology, Faculty of Medicine, JARA, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany

Ultimate intrinsic SNR has been introduced to establish an upper limit for physically achievable SNR in MRI. Up to now, due to computational complexity, ultimate intrinsic SNR solutions have only been presented for highly symmetric and homogeneous phantoms. Using 3D field simulations, we have evaluated ultimate intrinsic SNR for the human head at 9.4T allowing comparison of novel conductor arrangements for high field, parallel imaging coils and evaluating experimental performance in an absolute measure. Simulation results using a human head model (Ella) are presented.