Low Acoustic RF Coil Design

Saikat Saha¹, Washington De Lima²

During high field MR scans, patients become uncomfortable due to the high acoustic noise and vibration produced inside the patient bore. This noise can be as high as ~125dBA depending on the field strength of the scanner and PSD being used. The main source of noise inside the scanner is due to the gradient coil (when pulsed) vibrating in a static magnetic field generated by the magnet. This noise is transmitted through the RF body coil to the patient ears. Another major source of noise is vibration of the RF body coil itself. RF body coil vibrates due to the eddy current generated by the gradient coil pulsing on the copper sections of the RF coil. Some of the previous work, which addresses the issue of acoustic noise and vibration have been documented in [1-2]. The design described here addresses the issue of acoustic noise by significantly reducing the vibration which in turn reduces the noise by upto 9 dBA in a conventional Birdcage RF coil without compromising the RF performance.