Abstract #3628

Very-high order shimming in the human spinal cord using a dedicated 24-channel array coil

Ryan Topfer¹, Grégoire Germain¹, Jason P. Stockmann², Karl Metzemaekers³, Hoby Hetherington⁴, Raphaël Paquin⁵, Piotr Starewicz³, Nikola Stikov^1,6, and Julien Cohen-Adad^1,7

¹NeuroPoly Lab, Institute of Biomedical Engineering, École Polytechnique de Montréal, Montreal, QC, Canada, ²Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Department of Radiology, Massachusetts General Hospital, Charlestown, MA, United States, ³Resonance Research Inc., Billerica, MA, United States, ⁴Department of Radiology, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, United States, ⁵Siemens Healthcare Ltd., Montreal, QC, Canada, ⁶Montreal Heart Institute, Université de Montréal, Montreal, QC, Canada, ⁷Functional Neuroimaging Unit, CRIUGM, Université de Montréal, Montreal, QC, Canada

Pathologies of the spinal cord are a primary cause of functional disability and chronic pain. Although MRI already plays a role in the evaluation of these pathologies, it continues to be hampered by artifacts due to magnetic field inhomogeneity. This study reports the first results applying a specially designed 24-channel shim array to correct magnetic field inhomogeneity in the human spinal cord. Shimming using the custom array improved field homogeneity in the thoracic spinal cord of the two initial subjects by 53.6 % and 31.4 % respectively.

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