Matrix Gradient System: Concept and Performance Evaluation

Feng Jia¹, Gerrit Schultz¹, Anna M. Welz¹, Sebastian Littin¹, Hans Weber¹, Jrgen Hennig¹, Maxim Zaitsev¹

Encoding with nonlinear encoding fields (SEMs) has raised increasing interest in the past few years. Matrix coils appear to offer a high flexibility in generating customized SEMs and are particularly promising for localized high resolution imaging applications such as PatLoc or ExLoc. However, up to now, it is still an open question of how to assess the performance of such matrix coils. In this work we propose a new performance measure that is oriented towards optimal local encoding. An optimization problem is formulated that results in high-performance cylindrical matrix coil designs with a high number of elements. The results are tested and the analysis reveals novel features of matrix coil designs.