Abstract #3866

Miniaturized and Reproducible Phase Shifters using Capacitor-Loaded Transmission Lines for Add-On RF Shimming at High Field

Ming Lu¹, Yue Zhu^2,3, John Gore^2,3,4, William A. Grissom^2,3,4, and Xinqiang Yan^2,3

¹College of nuclear equipment and nuclear engineering, Yantai University, Yantai, China, ²Vanderbilt University Institute of Imaging Science, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, TN, United States, ³Department of Radiology and Radiological Sciences, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, TN, United States, ⁴Department of Biomedical Engineering, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, United States

Synopsis

Add-on RF shimming devices, including phase shifters, could provide additional degrees of freedom for RF transmit chains to improve field uniformity and reduce SAR. At the Larmor frequencies of MRI, however, the transmission line length for realizing large phase shifts becomes unrealistically long. We introduce a capacitor-loaded transmission line design to build a miniaturized microstrip line phase shifter for RF shimming at high fields. The fabricated phase shift boards had a miniaturized size of 3 x 4 cm², exhibited a low loss of < 0.26 dB, and cost much less than those made from other materials.

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