1Medical Engineering - School of Applied Health and Social Sciences, University of Applied Sciences Upper Austria, Linz, Austria, 2R&D HW LC, Siemens Healthcare GmbH, Erlangen, Germany
This abstract is a first investigation on antenna materials and designs for anatomically adaptive local coils for MR Imaging. To overcome the SNR losses by poorly loaded and non-fitting RF coils, we proposed a stretchable antenna design. Each loop has the ability to reversible stretch up to 100% of its original size, to be anatomically adaptive to different shapes and sizes in three dimensions. Through bench measurements and MR Imaging at 1.5T we investigated different stretchable antenna materials, that fit the defined requirements. The results of stretchable loops showed an in average SNR loss of under 10% in comparison to standard loops, but we suppose that the improved filling factor will lead to much higher SNR of the adaptive loops. Further research may consider different improvements.
