• Investigative Magnetic Resonance Imaging
• /
• v.23 no.3
• /
• pp.179-201
• /
• 2019

Portable low-cost magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) systems have the potential to enable "point-of-care" and timely MRI diagnosis, and to make this imaging modality available to routine scans and to people in underdeveloped countries and areas. With simplicity, no maintenance, no power consumption, and low cost, permanent magnets/magnet arrays/magnet assemblies are attractive to be used as a source of static magnetic field to realize the portability and to lower the cost for an MRI scanner. However, when taking the canonical Fourier imaging approach and using linear gradient fields, homogeneous fields are required in a scanner, resulting in the facts that either a bulky magnet/magnet array is needed, or the imaging volume is too small to image an organ if the magnet/magnet array is scaled down to a portable size. Recently, with the progress on image reconstruction based on non-linear gradient field, static field patterns without spatial linearity can be used as spatial encoding magnetic fields (SEMs) to encode MRI signals for imaging. As a result, the requirements for the homogeneity of the static field can be relaxed, which allows permanent magnets/magnet arrays with reduced sizes, reduced weight to image a bigger volume covering organs such as a head. It offers opportunities of constructing a truly portable low-cost MRI scanner. For this exciting potential application, permanent magnets/magnet arrays have attracted increased attention recently. A magnet/magnet array is strongly associated with the imaging volume of an MRI scanner, image reconstruction methods, and RF excitation and RF coils, etc. through field patterns and field homogeneity. This paper offers a review of permanent magnets and magnet arrays of different kinds, especially those that can be used for spatial encoding towards the development of a portable and low-cost MRI system. It is aimed to familiarize the readers with relevant knowledge, literature, and the latest updates of the development on permanent magnets and magnet arrays for MRI. Perspectives on and challenges of using a permanent magnet/magnet array to supply a patterned static magnetic field, which does not have spatial linearity nor high field homogeneity, for image reconstruction in a portable setup are discussed.

• Progress in Superconductivity and Cryogenics
• /
• v.23 no.4
• /
• pp.30-34
• /
• 2021

Superconducting magnets have paved the way for opening new horizons in designing an electromagnet of a high field magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) device. In the first phase of the superconducting MRI magnet era, low-temperature superconductor (LTS) has played a key role in constructing the main magnet of an MRI device. The highest magnetic resonance (MR) field of 11.7 T was indeed reached using LTS, which is generated by the well-known Iseult project. However, as the limit of current carrying capacity and mechanical robustness under a high field environment is revealed, it is widely believed that commercial LTS wires would be challenging to manufacture a high field (>10 T) MRI magnet. As a result, high-temperature superconductor together with the conducting cooling approach has been spotlighted as a promising alternative to the conventional LTS. In 2020, the Korean government launched a national project to develop an HTS magnet for a high field MRI magnet as an extent of this interest. We have performed a design study of a 7 T 320 mm winding bore HTS MRI magnet, which may be the ultimate goal of this project. Thus, in this paper, design study results are provided. Electromagnetic design and analysis were performed considering the requirements of central magnetic field and spatial field uniformity.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
• /
• v.35 no.4
• /
• pp.105-110
• /
• 2014

For the combination of MRI and magnetic particle hyperthermia(MPH), we investigated the relative heating efficiency with respect to the strength of the static magnetic field under which the magnetic nanoparticles are to be heated by RF magnetic field. We performed nanoparticle heating experiments at the fringe field of 3T MRI magnet with applying the RF magnetic field perpendicularly to the static magnetic field. The static field strengths were 0T, 0.1T, 0.2T, and 0.3T. To prevent the coil heat from conducting to the nanoparticle suspension, we cooled the heating solenoid coil with temperature-controlled water with applying heat insulators between the solenoid coil and the nanoparticle container. We observed significant decrease of heat generation, up to 6% at 0.3T(100% at 0T), due to the magnetic saturation of the nanoparticles of 15 nm diameter under the static field. We think MPH is still feasible at low magnetic field lower than 0.3T if stronger RF magnetic field generation is permitted.

• Journal of the Korean Magnetic Resonance Society
• /
• v.24 no.3
• /
• pp.66-69
• /
• 2020

In ultra-low field magnetic resonance imaging (ULF-MRI), the strength of a static magnetic field can be comparable to that of gradient field. On that occasion, the gradient field is accompanied by concomitant gradient field, which yields distortion and blurring artifacts on MR images. Here, we focused on the distortion artifact and derived the equations capable of correcting it. Its usefulness was confirmed through the corrections in both simulated and experimental images. This solution will be effective for acquiring more accurate images in low and/or ultra-low magnetic fields.

• The Korean Journal of Applied Statistics
• /
• v.16 no.2
• /
• pp.305-319
• /
• 2003

This paper provides a non-Bayesian method based on the expanded EM algorithm for segmenting the magnetic resonance images degraded by bias field. For the images with the intensity as a pixel value, many segmentation methods often fail to segment it because of the bias field(with low frequency) as well as noise(with high frequency). Our contextual approach is appropriately designed by using normal mixture model incorporated with Markov random field for noise-corrective segmentation and by using the penalized likelihood to estimate bias field for efficient bias filed-correction.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Radiology
• /
• v.15 no.4
• /
• pp.565-573
• /
• 2021

The spatial distribution of electromagnetic fields in the human body can be adjusted by using high dielectric materials. This method has a complementary compared to other methods. However, it can be used as a powerful dielectric shimming tool in certain applications. It can be manufactured in a geometrically free shape and a pad manufactured according to the purpose can be applied without any change of the system. Especially in ultrahigh magnetic field (UHF) MRI, the clinical high dielectric pad used to increase the intensity of the transmit (B1+) and receive (B1-) fields, which has low sensitivity due to the high operating frequency, has great potential. In addition, there are few studies applied to UHF MRI. Therefore, in this study, a high dielectric material pad made of calcium titanate suspension was developed in the laboratory. And the signal increase of clinically useful images was confirmed in various protocols of UHF 7T MRI.

• Proceedings of the KSMRM Conference
• /
• 2001.11a
• /
• pp.174-174
• /
• 2001

Purpose： Dimensions of body RF coil composed of 4 rectangular loops for low field open MRI hav been optimized. The design result shows the field inhomogeneity of B1 field below 1.5 dB in the 25 cm DSV can be achieved. Method： Our low field RF coil is composed of 4 rectangular strip loops that assumed to b located at both the bottom and top sides of permanent magnet. All the loops have identica dimensions and current amplitude. First, the inductance of a loop is calculated. Second, the current distribution on the coil strip is calculated by using finite difference time doma method (FDTD). It takes as much as 4 days in FDTD simulation for low frequency RF field That's why the electrical dipole radiation method is used for simulation. With the curren distribution obtained using the FDTD simulation, for various dimensional parameters th magnetic field has been calculated by electric dipole radiation method, where the curren elements are regarded as electric dipole radiation sources. The field pattern from electri dipole radiation is almost same as that from FDTD simulation. Also, it is same as that fro the result using the Viot-Savart equation, for far tone radiation term becomes zero and th Bl field amplitude of near one radiation is the same as the B field due to static current The field homogeneity is calculated in the 25 cm BSV.

• Proceedings of the KSMRM Conference
• /
• 2002.11a
• /
• pp.47-49
• /
• 2002

At present, the trend of magnetic field strength in MRI system is dramatically changing. In early 70, the only low field (<0.5T) was developed. It was technically difficult to develop the high field system. At that time, people believed that the fine MR imaging could not be obtained in the high field MR system due to the magnetic susceptibility effect. However, 1.5T system was evolved at the end of 80, and used for clinical usage. Thus, it was proved that the signal to noise ratio (SNR) could be greatly contribute to enhance the image quality. And, the results of functional MRI and MR spectroscopy could be improved in the higher field MR system. So, 8T system was eventually developed in Ohio State University Hospital at the end of 90. Therefore, there is no doubt that the system with the ultra high magnetic field strength will be developed near future in 21 century.

• Proceedings of the KSMRM Conference
• /
• 2002.11a
• /
• pp.76-76
• /
• 2002

Purpose： The purpose of this study is to optimize the configuration of body RF coil composed of 4 planar subcoils for low field open MRI. Method： Our low field RE coil is composed of 4 subcoils assumed to be located at both the bottom and top sides of permanent magnet. Each subcoils has 3 main strips. The coil system has mirror inversion symmetry. First, the currents on the strips are obtained by inductance calculation and circuit analysis, Second, all the strips are divided into line strip elements across the strips, the self Inductances of line strip elements and the mutual inductances among the line strip elements are calculated, and current distributions of strip are obtained by circuit analysis, where each strip is considered as parallel combination of line strip elements. Finally all the line strip elements are segmented, magnetic field has been calculated by pseudo electric dipole radiation method, where the current elements are regarded as pseudo electric dipole radiation sources. We have performed above procedures for various configurations of RE coil. The field homogeneity is calculated in the 25 cm DSV.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Radiology
• /
• v.17 no.7
• /
• pp.1123-1131
• /
• 2023

This study aimed to present a method to effectively suppress metal artifacts caused by spinal fusion surgery during spinal MRI study. For this purpose, a phantom made of spinal surgery screws was created to reproduce the metal artifact. Then, images were acquired with 1.5T and 3.0T MRI to evaluate changes in metal artifacts according to magnetic field strength. In addition, metal artifacts were evaluated by increasing the receive bandwidth to 200, 400 and 800 Hz/PX. As a result, metal artifacts occurring in images obtained from the 1.5T MRI decreased by approximately 52.2% compared to images obtained from the 3.0T MRI, showing a significant difference (p<0.05). In particular, the signal loss and signal pile up areas were reduced by approximately 52.81% and 42.71%, respectively, showing a significant effect in suppressing metal artifacts. On the other hand, when images were acquired while increasing the receive bandwidth from 200 to 800 Hz/PX, there was no significant effect, with a decrease of up to 8.93% for the 1.5T MRI and up to 10.98% for the 3.0T MRI (p>0.05). As a result of this study, increasing the receive bandwidth reduced signal loss and reduced some metal artifacts, but did not have a significant effect because it did not suppress signal pile up. However, when the magnetic field strength was reduced from 3.0T to 1.5T, signal loss and signal pile up were greatly reduced, effectively improving the metal artifact. Therefore, in order to suppress metal artifacts caused by spinal fusion surgery, study using a low magnetic field MRI can be said to be the most effective method.