B1 Correction for Quantitative in vivo 19F Magnetic Resonance Imaging with Surface Coils

Philipp Bhm-Sturm¹, Eberhard D. Pracht¹, Markus Aswendt¹, Nadine Henn¹, Mathias Hoehn¹

19F MRI has recently received much attention, especially in the field of cell tracking. One of the main advantages of 19F MRI is that it is possible to quantify the number of cells. However, this only holds for the use of volume coils with a homogeneous B1 field for both transmission and reception. Here we present a workflow that allows quantitative 19F MRI with surface coils by mapping the B1 field on the 1H channel and subsequent correction of 19F data by post-processing. Our work may resolve an inherent conflict of sensitivity vs. quantification in coil design for 19F MRI.