High-Temperature Superconducting Radiofrequency Probe for MRI Applications Operated Below Ambient Pressure in a Simple Liquid-Nitrogen Cryostat

Simon Auguste Lambert¹, Marie Poirier-Quinot², Jean-christophe Ginefri³, Luc Darrasse²

Small high-temperature superconducting coils improve the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) but their use is limited by the large degradation of their electrical properties due to the static magnetic field, depending both on the coil orientation relative to B0 and on the cooling temperature (THTS). In this work, by decreasing THTS from 83K to 69K, SNR improvement has been demonstrated, degree of freedom in the coil orientation has been added. Moreover THTS control has appeared to be an easy way to retune the HTS coil to the NMR frequency. Additional THTS decrease would be beneficial for imaging small animals at higher fields.