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Abstract #0671

A Universal Bz Coil for Uniform Multiphoton Excitation in High-Field MRI

John M Drago1,2,3, Mathias Davids2,3, Jason P Stockmann2,3, Bastien Guerin2,3, and Lawrence L Wald2,3,4
1Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, United States, 2Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, United States, 3Dept. of Radiology, Massachusetts General Hospital, A. A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Boston, MA, United States, 4Dept. of Health Sciences and Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, United States

Synopsis

Keywords: RF Pulse Design & Fields, Brain

Motivation: Contrast in high-field MRI is obscured by the spatially non-uniform excitation flip angle profile of conventional birdcage transmit coils.

Goal(s): We demonstrate that a single $$$B_z$$$ coil operated in the kHz range can supplement a birdcage to create a spatially-uniform flip angle profile using multiphoton excitation.

Approach: We use a stream function boundary element method to optimize the $$$B_z$$$ coil windings to produce homogeneous nonselective multiphoton excitations across a universal pulse database and validate with Bloch simulations.

Results: The single $$$B_z$$$ channel achieved a mean flip angle NRMSE of 13.9% for a 90º target MP-pTx pulse in test subjects.

Impact: The design method provides a simplified hardware configuration and reduced local SAR concerns compared to either conventional pTx or our previous work using a full shim array in conjunction with multiphoton parallel transmission.

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