• Progress in Medical Physics
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.85-89
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• 2002

We authors developed a new small-size birdcage RF coil for animal MR images. And we compared signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of the new small coil with a conventional knee coil. The dimension of the low-pass type birdcage coil with 12 elements at 37 MRI system are 13 cm outer diameter, 12 cm inner diameter and 20 cm length. For each element, the width of copper tape is 0.05 mm, thickness is 8 mm and length is 20 cm. The small birdcage coil with 12 elements exhibited 7 resonance modes. The isolation of the quadrature channel could be achieved more than 20 ㏈. The coil quality factor (Q value) was 98.6. The SNR of the animal coil was 243.2 on the average and was about twice as high as the conventional knee coil. The present study successfully demonstrated that the small birdcage coil could provide high quality animal MR images with the improved SNR. Therefore, it is expected that the small birdcage coil could be used in the clinical diagnosis and research studies for veterinary medicine in the near future.