• Investigative Magnetic Resonance Imaging
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• v.7 no.2
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• pp.137-143
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• 2003

Purpose : B1 field of birdcage RF (radiofrequency) coil that is used most for brain imaging in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) decreases toward endring from the coil center. We investigated how much RE B1 homogeneity effect the endcap shield brings form the coil center as it towards to endcap region. Materials and Methods : We compared RF B1 field distribution by each finite difference time domain (EDTD) simulations for lowpass, highpass and hybrid birdcage RF coils. We selected the highpass birdcage RF coil that was the highest RF B1 field condition as simulation result, and studied how much RF B1 homogeneity effect was occurred when endcap shield was applied to endring area. Results : B1 field of the highpass birdcage RF coil was higher than other birdcage RF coil types as simulation result. However, the RF B1 homogeneity was lower than other coil types. RE B1 field of highpass birdcage RF coil with endcap shield is similar with RF B1 field of hybrid birdcage RF coil and the overall RE B1 homogeneity in sagittal direction was better. Conclusion In this paper, proposed method can apply improving RF B1 homogeneity of RF coil in clinical examination.

• Journal of the Korean Magnetic Resonance Society
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.25-36
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• 2003

The performance of radio frequency (RF) coils, used in MRI units, is determined by the image uniformity and the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). Birdcage and surface coils are commonly used. A birdcage coil provides a good image uniformity while a surface coil produces a high SNR. In this study, therefore, a staircase coil was designed from a standard version of a birdcage coil, with some structural changes to increase SNR while maintaining image uniformity. In phantom experiments, the improvement of the image to uniformity and the SNR increase of the staircase coil compared with the values for the birdcage coil were about 3.5% and 35%, respectively. In clinical experiment, the SNR increase of the staircase coil, compared with the value for the birdcage coil was about 40% in bone, muscle and blood-vessel tissues. These results show that the performance of the staircase coil was very improved over the standard birdcage coil in terms of SNR, and that image uniformity was maintained. Therefore, the staircase coil designed by this study should be useful in experimental and clinical l.5T MRI systems, and this coil offers an alternative method of quadrature detection.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Telematics and Electronics S
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• v.35S no.5
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• pp.42-47
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• 1998

Bridcage RF coil is one of the most widely used RF coils in MRI. In order to use birdcage RF coils in open MRI systems, an open tructured birdcage RF coil has been investigated. By opening the ring structure of an original birdcage RF coil and driving the coil at two opening ends, the original birdcage RF coil can be modified to an open structured coil. In order to improve magnetic field uniformity of the open birdcage RF coil, driving voltage phases at the two opening ends can be controlled to be in-phase or out-of-phase each other. Operating frequency of the open birdcage RF coil has been theoretically derived, and the theoretical derivation has been verified by experiments.

• Proceedings of the KSMRM Conference
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• 2001.11a
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• pp.177-177
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• 2001

목적： Head coil이나 Knee coil로 촬영하기에 부피가 작은 신체의 부위나 동물을 촬영하기 위하여 3T small birdcage coil을 개발하고 실험을 통해 코일의 효율성을 조사하였다. 대상 및 방법： 원통형 아크릴과 구리테이프를 사용하여 원통의 내경이 Knee coil보다 작은 8개의 elements를 가진 birdcage coil을 설계 제작하였고 팬톰, 지원자, 동물에 대한 MR 영상으로 그 가치를 평가하였다.

• 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.

• Investigative Magnetic Resonance Imaging
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.75-78
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• 1997

A dual birdcage RF coil is proposed for MRI and MRA of the human leg. The proposed coil c can be used to cover the whole human leg by imaging upper and lower parts of the leg separately. In the conventional leg imaging scheme using a single RF coil, the leg has to be r relocated when changing the position of the RF coil thus causing problems in matching the i images from two sets of coils. When using the proposed dual RF coil, however, only the bed h has to be moved to select the imaging region while only one part of the dual coil is used each t time by using current switching and PIN diodes. The utility of proposed coil has been verified b by volunteer MRI and MRA and the imaging results show that the coil is useful for the clinical MRI and MRA of the leg.

• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.26 no.4
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• pp.245-250
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• 2017

A novel method to implement a birdcage-type receiving coil sensor for use in a magnetic resonance imaging(MRI) system has been demonstrated employing a flexible printed circuit board (FPCB) fabrication technique. Unlike the conventional methods, the two-dimensional shape of the coil sensor is first implemented as a FPCB and then it is attached to the surface of a cylindrical supporting structure to implement the three-dimensional birdcage-type coil sensor. The proposed method is very effective to implement object-specific MRI coil sensors especially for small animal measurements in research and preclinical applications since the existing well-developed FPCB-based techniques can easily meet the requirements on accuracies and costs during coil implement process. The performances of the coil sensor verified through $^1H$ 1.5T MRI measurements for small animals and it showed excellent characteristics by providing a high spatial precision and a high signal-to-noise ratio.

• Journal of the Korean Magnetic Resonance Society
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.48-60
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• 2005

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to design and build an optimized birdcage resonator configuration with a low pass filter, which would facilitate the acquisition of high-resolution 3D-image of small animals at 3T MRI system. Methods and Materials: The birdcage resonator with 12-element structures was built, in order to ensure B1 homogeneity over the image volume and maximum filling factor, and hence to maximize the signal to noise ratio (SNR) and resolution of the 3-dimensional images. The diameter and length of each element of a birdcage resonator were as follows: (1) diameter 13 cm, length 22 cm, (2) diameter 15 cm, length 22 cm, (3) diameter 17 cm, length 25 cm. Spin echo pulse sequence and fast spin echo pulse sequence were employed in obtaining MR images. The quality of the manufactured birdcage resonators wes evaluated on the basis of the return loss following matching and tuning process. Results: The experimental MR image of phantoms by the various manufactured birdcage resonators were obtained to compare the SNR in accordance with the size of objects. The size of an object to that of coil was identified by parameters that were estimated from the image of a phantom. First, the diameter of the birdcage resonator was 15cm, and the ratio of the tangerine to the birdcage resonator accounted for approximately 27%. The Q factor was 53.2 and the SNR was 150.7. Second, at the same birdcage resonator, the ratio of the orange was approximately 53%. The SNR and the Q parameter was 212.8 and 91.2, respectively. Conclusion: The present study demonstrated that if birdcage resonators have the same forms, SNR could be different depending on the size of an object, especially when the size of an object to that of coil is approximately 40~80%, the former is bigger than the latter. Therefore, when the size of an object to be observed is smaller than that of coil, the coil should be manufactured in accordance with the size of an object in order to obtain much more excellent images.

• Journal of Magnetics
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.308-311
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• 2015

We design a crisscrossed double-layer birdcage (DLBC) coil by modifying the coil geometry of a standard single-layer BC (SLBC) coil to enhance the homogeneity of transmitting magnetic flux density ($B_1{^+}$) along the main magnetic field ($B_0$)-direction for small-animal magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) at 300 MHz. The performance assessment of the crisscrossed DLBC coil is conducted by computational analysis with the finite-difference time domain method (FDTD) and compared with SLBC coil in terms of the $B_1$ and the $B_1{^+}$ distribution. As per the computational calculation studies, the mean value in the two-dimensional $B_1{^+}$ map obtained at the mid-axial slice with the proposed DLBC coil is slightly lower than that obtained with the SLBC coil, but the $B_1{^+}$ value of the DLBC coil in the outermost plane (40 mm away from the central plane) shows improvements of 19.3% and 24.8% over the SLBC coil $B_1{^+}$ value when simulating a spherical phantom and realistic mouse body modeling. These simulation results indicate that, the $B_1{^+}$ homogeneity along the z-direction was improved by using DLBC configuration. Our approach enables $B_1{^+}$ homogeneity improvement along the zdirection, and it can also be applied to ultra-high field (UHF) MRI systems.

• Progress in Medical Physics
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.54-58
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• 2004

The aim of this study was to develop special birdcage resonators for small objects including the human wrist, hand and small animals, using 3T MRI/MRS. Before substantial development, different types of parameters were arranged, based on theoretical analysis, through lumped element transmission line theory. The primary analysis was peformed with a network analyzer (HP 4195A) and the final experimental analysis was carried out with 3T MRI (Medinus, Korea). The manufactured birdcage resonator is typically composed of 12-element structures to which a low-pass filter is fundamentally applied. The diameter and length of each element of the birdcage resonator were as follows: (1) diameter 12 cm, length of element 22 cm, (2) diameter 15 cm, length of element 22 cm, and (2) diameter 17 cm, length of element 25 cm. Copper tape with a width of 1 cm was used for the coils. MRI acquisition parameters were TR=500 ms, TE=17 ms, and Ave=2 for T1-WT images, and TR=4,000 ms, TE=96 ms, and Ave=2 for T2-WT images. The ratio of the samples diameter to the birdcage resonators diameter was approximately 55%, 63% and 70%, respectively, for the three elements. This study determined that the best image quality and S/N ratio were obtained when the ratio of the object's diameter was approximately 50∼80%. A general theoretical analysis of the birdcage coil differs in many respects from the experimental results which were influenced by many factors that were not considering when the general theoretical analysis of the birdcage coil was peformed. The induced resistance may be considered as part of the resistive loss if the quantitative value can be determined using a radiation resistance approach.