Mariska P. Luttje1, Ingmar J. Voogt1, Marco van Vulpen1, Peter R. Luijten1, Dennis W.J. Klomp1, and Alexander J.E. Raaijmakers1
In
this study, we demonstrate that a dipole transceive antenna array with a loop coil
receive array at 7T substantially outperforms state of the art 3T MRI of the
prostate. Using this setup we demonstrated for the first time the intrinsic SNR
benefits of using the higher field strength of 7 tesla for prostate MR imaging
compared to a clinically used prostate imaging setup at 3 tesla: an overall
gain in SNR of 2.1 fold as obtained in 6 subjects.