Abstract #2728

16-Channel Receive Array Insert for Breast Imaging at 7T

Samantha By¹, Joseph Rispoli¹, Jiaming Cui², Sergey Cheshkov³,⁴, Ivan E. Dimitrov³,⁵, Craig R. Malloy³,⁴, Steve Wright¹,², Mary P. McDougall¹,²

¹Biomedical Engineering, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, United States; ²Electrical and Computer Engineering, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, United States; ³Advanced Imaging Research Center, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, TX, United States; ⁴Radiology, University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, Dallas, TX, United States; ⁵Philips Medical Systems, Cleveland, OH, United States

B1 inhomogeneities associated with high fields make effective imaging and hardware design challenging. "Forced current excitation" (FCE) provides homogeneous excitation and ease of tuning, irrespective of asymmetric loading, but the necessary incorporation of transmission line lengths in the resonant structure decreases SNR. This work presents the combined use of a FCE transmit breast coil with a 16-channel receive array insert to increase the receive sensitivity while taking advantage of the benefits of FCE during transmission. Breast imaging results indicate an improvement in SNR of up to six times from the insert as compared to the FCE coil in T/R mode.