A 16-Element Highly Flexible RF Array Coil for 3T MRI

Yunsuo Duan¹, Bradley S. Peterson¹, Feng Liu¹, Alayar Kangarlu¹

The SNR of array coils depend on the filling factor of the coils because the sensitivity of each coil element dramatically attenuates with the increase of the separation between the coil element and the object to be imaged. A desirable array coil therefore is expected to be positioned closest to the object. This requires that the array coil must be highly flexible in order to fit for objects of variable dimensions and the coil built in a way that its flexibility does not affect its performance. Although some adjustable array coils have been proposed, their flexibility is limited because of the extreme difficulty in decoupling between coil elements with the change of coil geometries. We present a 16-element array coil with high flexibility and provide a comparison study between the highly flexible array coil and a rigid cylindrical coil based on our research on high decoupling. The flexible array coils are able to significantly improve the SNR and homogeneity of images.