Detunable RF Coil for Arterial Spin Labeling at 7T

Myung-Kyun Woo¹, Randall B. Stafford², Suk-Min Hong¹, Se-Hong Oh², Young-Bo Kim¹, Jongho Lee², Zang-Hee Cho¹

Arterial Spin Labeling (ASL) at ultra-high field benefits from increased spin polarization and blood T1 and has potential to improve perfusion maps. However, one needs to overcome the challenges of increased specific absorption rate (SAR), B0 and B1 inhomogeneity. Particularly, SAR is an important hurdle for continuous or pseudo-continuous ASL due to the use of long RF labeling. To address this challenge, we have developed a new RF coil system that has separate labeling coils. This approach allows us to reduce SAR by removing RF for the control condition.