• Investigative Magnetic Resonance Imaging
• /
• v.11 no.1
• /
• pp.20-26
• /
• 2007

Purpose : The purpose of the present study was to develop and optimize solenoid coil for animal- model in 3 T MRI system and investigate and compare with the birdcage coil concerning the image quality with the various parameters such as SNR and Q-factor. Materials and Methods : Solenoid coil for animal-model was made on the acryl structure (diameter 4 cm, length 10 cm) 3 times-winding cooper tape of width 2 cm, thickness 0.05 cm and length 10 cm with 2 cm interval between winded tapes. Capacitors from 2 pF to 100 pF were used, and the solenoid coil was designed for receiver only coil. Results : SNR of the developed solenoid was 985 in CuSO4 0.7 g/L and 995 in rat experiment. Q-factor was 84-89 in unloaded condition and 203-206 in loaded condition. Conclusion : The resolution of the image obtained from solenoid was relatively higher than that of the conventional birdcage coil. In addition, the homogeneity of RF field by coil simulation was significantly excellent. The present study demonstrated that the solenoid coil could be useful to obtain small animal images with better contrast, resolution, visibility than images from birdcage.

• Proceedings of the KSMRM Conference
• /
• 1999.11a
• /
• pp.97-97
• /
• 1999

• Proceedings of the KSMRM Conference
• /
• 2001.11a
• /
• pp.149-149
• /
• 2001

목적： Birdcage coil보다 SNR이 높은 Surface coil을 이용하여 시각 자극에 대한 반응 정도의 차이를 보이고자 한다. 대상 및 방법： 연구 개발 중인 Magnum 3.0T로 영상을 얻었다. 실험 대상자는 정상인 지원자로 하였고, 10Hz로 깜박거리는 발광다이오드를 이용하여 시각 자극을 실행하였다. 일정 paradigm으로 얻어진 영상은 SPM으로 분석하였다.

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Electromagnetic Engineering and Science
• /
• v.11 no.6
• /
• pp.976-983
• /
• 2000

In this paper, Bridcage type RF coils used widely as RF coils for MRI and its applicable type, spiral type RF coil are analyzed and designed using FDTD method. In low tesla (IT, 1.5T) MRI system, several tools have been used for the analysis and design of the RF coils for MRI. This includes, so-called, LC equivalent circuit method for predicting the resonance frequency of the coil and the Biot-Savart law to determine the field distribution within the coil. Both of the circuit analysis and Biot-Savart law are low frequency techniques. Therefore, at high frequency applications, the circuit model approximation breaks down because the coil geometry is a significant fraction of the wavelength. In this paper, we analyzed and designed RF coils for 3T MRI using FDTD method. This method is a full wave analysis and very accurate at low and high frequencies. Also, this RF coils are actually fabricated and FDTD models of RF coils for MRI are proven.

• Journal of Biomedical Engineering Research
• /
• v.29 no.2
• /
• pp.99-106
• /
• 2008

To improve $B_1$ homogeneity in high field MRI, the RF power is applied to the transmit array coil elements sequentially in the time-multiplexed way. Since only a single coil element is activated in a time-multiplexing slot, the global standing wave formation in the human body is greatly suppressed. The time-multiplexing slot width is on the order of micro seconds, hence, high-order-harmonic slices can be placed far from the transmit coil and simultaneous multiple slice selection can be avoided. The $B_1$ homogeneities of a birdcage coil and an eight-channel transmit array coil have been compared through finite difference time domain simulations. The simulation results indicate that the proposed technique can reduce the peak-to-peak $B_1$ inhomogeneity down to one fourth of the transmission with a birdcage coil on the central plane of the human head model at 3 T. The mimicking experiments at 3 T, eight separate experiments with a single coil element activated and image reconstruction by combining the eight images, also show promising results. It is expected that the proposed technique has some advantages over other $B_1$ improving methods in real practice since simple RF switching circuitries are only necessary and electromagnetic coupling between the coil elements is out of concern in its realization.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Medical Physics Conference
• /
• 2002.09a
• /
• pp.363-364
• /
• 2002

We describe quadrature type surface coil for functional magnetic resonance imaging at 3T MRI system. The coil consisted of two coplanar resonators and was used as both transmitter and receiver. The signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of the coil was compared with that of a standard birdcage head coil. Visual cortex activation on normal subjects using LED flicker was performed. The SNR of surface coil was found to be better than that of the conventional head coil.

• Proceedings of the KOSOMBE Conference
• /
• v.1997 no.11
• /
• pp.291-293
• /
• 1997

A new quadrature RF coil is designed for Breast MR Imaging. Quadrature RF coils for MRI have been useful to improve the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) by "$\sqrt{2}$" using two orthogonal RF coils in combination. A modified Breast Quadrature coil is designed. It is a modified type of the high-pass birdcage coil. To reduce the field distortion, by using current feeding, the field pattern is optimized to achieve a quadrature circularly-polarized field pattern. The coil has been implemented for receive-only mode, and tested by phantom imaging. The experimental results show the utility of the proposed RF coil.

• Proceedings of the KOSOMBE Conference
• /
• v.1996 no.11
• /
• pp.161-164
• /
• 1996

An actively-shielded $r^{2}$-gradient coil has been developed for brain localized MRI or MRS. Spatial localization is very useful for spatial volume selection in MRI or MR Spectroscopy(MRS). The radial(or $R^{2}-$) gradient coil is useful in reducing the artifact or in improving the SNR by selecting the volume with less number of RF pulses. It is, however, difficult to implement the coil with a gradient intensity strong enough to use it for practical whole-body MRI system. For example, the smallest volume size for selection is just 6 cm in diameter with a 250 Ampere of current driving for a whole-body system (in case of 70-cm-diameter). In this study, an asymetric $r^{2}$-coil with a small diameter of 35 cm has been designed and implemented for brain localized MRI or MRS. An 8-rod high-pass-type birdcage RF coil has also been implemented. The coil set has been developed for 1.0 Tesla Medison MRI system and its performance has been verified experimentally.

• The Transactions of The Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers
• /
• v.65 no.12
• /
• pp.2019-2022
• /
• 2016

In the presence of an electrically conducting medical lead, radio frequency (RF) coils in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) systems may concentrate the RF energy and cause tissue heating near the lead. A novel design for a medical lead to reduce this heating by introducing pins in the lead is presented. Peak 10 g specific absorption rate (SAR) in heart tissue, an indicator of heating, was calculated and compared for both conventional (Medtronic) lead design and our proposed design. Remcom XFdtd software was used to calculate the peak SAR distribution in a realistic model of the human body. The model contained a medical lead that was exposed to RF magnetic fields at 64 MHz (1.5 T), 128 MHz (3 T) and 300 MHz (7 T) using a model of an MR birdcage body coil. The proposed design of adding pins to the medical lead can significantly reduce the heating from different MRI systems.

• Investigative Magnetic Resonance Imaging
• /
• v.24 no.3
• /
• pp.95-122
• /
• 2020

In this article, we evaluated the performance of radiofrequency (RF) coils in terms of the signal-to-noise ratio (S/N) and homogeneity of magnetic resonance images when used for ultrahigh-frequency (UHF) 7T magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). High-quality MRI can be obtained when these two basic requirements are met. However, because of the dielectric effect, 7T magnetic resonance imaging still produces essentially a non-uniform magnetic flux (|B₁|) density distribution. In general, heterogeneous and homogeneous RF coils may be designed using electromagnetic (EM) modeling. Heterogeneous coils, which are surface coils, are used in consideration of scalability in the |B₁| region with a high S/N as multichannel loop coils rather than selecting a single loop. Loop coils are considered state of the art for their simplicity yet effective |B₁|-field distribution and intensity. In addition, combining multiple loop coils allows phase arrays (PA). PA coils have gained great interest for use in receiving signals because of parallel imaging (PI) techniques, such as sensitivity encoding (SENSE) and generalized autocalibrating partial parallel acquisition (GRAPPA), which drastically reduce the acquisition time. With the introduction of a parallel transmit coil (pTx) system, a form of transceiver loop arrays has also been proposed. In this article, we discussed the applications and proposed designs of loop coils. RF homogeneous coils for volume imaging include Alderman-Grant resonators, birdcage coils, saddle coils, traveling wave coils, transmission line arrays, composite right-/left-handed arrays, and fusion coils. In this article, we also discussed the basic operation, design, and applications of these coils.