Design of a Four-Channel Array Coil for Dual High-Resolution Rat Knee MR Imaging

Anne-Laure Perrier¹, Jean-Christophe Goebel¹, Astrid Pinzano², Emilie Roeder², Pierre Gillet², Denis Grenier¹, Olivier Beuf³

An equivalent electrical circuit of a four-channel NMR surface coil based on common conductor decoupling technique was proposed. The topology allowed good matching and good decoupling between elements without the use of additional low input impedance preamplifier and without additional capacitive network. The design of a four-channel surface coil with a particular wave-like topology for the simultaneous two rat knees imaging was realized at 300 MHz. The capacitor adjustments permit to obtain decoupling better than -17 dB between all element pairs. To our knowledge, this coil represents the first four-channel NMR surface coil based on common conductor not using the preamplifier decoupling technique. Performance of the coil was proved through the simultaneous HR-MRI of both knees joint of a rat. Voxel size of 49x49x98 m3 was obtained for a 1h22min acquisition time.