Chieh-Wei Chang1, Wen-Yang Chiang1, Steven M. Wright, 12, Mary Preston McDougall1, 2
1Biomedical Engineering, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, United States; 2Electrical Engineering, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, United States
Our 10-channel cardiovascular phased array and transmitting volume coil without active detune is presented. Parallel imaging techniques in MRI provide the capability to reduce scan time based on the partial or entire removal of phase-encoding steps, especially offering benefit to cardiovascular MRI of the murine model. Our 10-channel array, transmit coil, and a modular 16-channel low impedance preamplifier board that together constitute a compact parallel imaging of system. The integrated anesthesia chamber provides streamlined imaging capability. The dual plane pair element design [9] described 1) ensures that no coil-to-coil decoupling mechanism is needed other than the preamplifiers and 2) inherently decouples from a homogenous transmit field, eliminating the need for active decoupling and 3) reduces, and in this case, eliminates, the need for baluns and/or cable traps. The transmit coil design described ensures an extremely uniform sensitivity pattern, and the 16-channel preamplifier board described is compact and modularized for straightforward use with any array coil.
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