Program Information
Fast RF Coil Array Assessment in Clinical MRI: A Single-Slice Approach
Q Peng1*, (1) Albert Einstein College of Medicine, and Montefiore Medical Center, Bronx, NY
Presentations
SU-K-708-4 (Sunday, July 30, 2017) 4:00 PM - 6:00 PM Room: 708
Purpose: All clinical MRI RF receive coils are currently required to be assessed annually. Both imaging and postprocessing in this process are time consuming, especially for modern high-density phased-array coils. This work will verify the feasibility of a fast, single-slice approach to evaluate clinical coil array quantitatively.
Methods: A 32-channel phased-array head coil, and a 32-channel phased-array cardiac coil were evaluated. In each case, instead of planning for multiple 2D slices, or a 3D volume to cover the whole coil array sensitivity volume, a single slice with large slice thickness was planned. This slice is typically coronal, with slice thickness larger than the whole phantom size along the slice direction (32cm used here). After a quick 2D single slice MR acquisition (typically with a gradient echo sequence of ~2 seconds), a composite 2D image, and 2D images from each individual receiver were generated and analyzed quantitatively. IDL programs were developed to automatically perform ROI analysis on the composite image and on the individual receiver images. Mean SNR, max SNR, and uniformity was automatically calculated and compared with a 3D coil assessment method.
Results: SNR and uniformity analysis of both coils were consistent with much more complicated 3D coil assessment method. Inconsistent phantom and slice positions between different studies did not change the results larger than reasonable noise variation level. This 2D coil evaluation approach could be applied to all clinical coils or coil combinations including closed volume head coils, and phased-array surface coils with any number of coil elements. Coil/receiver performance assessment was very fast and straightforward, and could result in much more consistent results between different studies.
Conclusion: This single-slice imaging and analysis approach is a fast, convenient, and less subjective approach for quantitative coil assessment, particularly for high density phased-array coils.
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