Self-Decoupled RF Coils

RF arrays with large numbers of independent elements are desirable for parallel imaging and transmission. However, electromagnetic (EM) coupling between elements becomes significant as the number of coils increases and can severely impact coil performance. Several methods such as overlapping elements, L/C networks and auxiliary resonators have been proposed to reduce coupling, and are effective in decoupling adjacent elements, but are usually less effective for non-adjacent elements, and are not directly applicable to recently-proposed mixed arrays such as combinations of dipoles/monopoles and loop arrays. To address these problems, we propose a simple, geometry-independent self-decoupled RF coil design in which the two induced current modes in a loop coil can be adjusted to cancel each other. The method is validated in EM simulations, bench tests and MR experiments.