A Monte Carlo Simulation Study on Receiver Gain Variation of Linear Combined MRI Coil Array

Liang Liu¹, Faiz Ikramulla¹, Velibor Pikelja¹, Jonathan Nass¹, Ashok Menon¹

Combiners/splitters have been widely used in MRI phased array for channel reduction and mode selection. Unlike uncombined MRI coil array where signals are weighted differently by the associated noise level in image reconstruction, combined MRI channels use RF switch and combiner circuits to merge received signals directly and both the magnitude and phase of the signals require finely tuning prior combining. For coils with the combiner circuits built after the preamplifiers stage, the gain variations of these preamplifiers have significant impact on the performance of final combined signals. A Monte Carlo simulation was tested based on real preamplifier data to investigate this effect and aimed to help determine specifications for coil designers.