Nadine Smith1, Kristina Haines2, Maarten Versluis1, Andrew Webb1
1Radiology, Leiden University Medical Center, Leiden, Netherlands; 2Electrical Engineering, Penn State University, University Park, PA, USA
Human brain images have been obtained using excitation from a tuned patch antenna placed ~50 cm away from the subject in a whole body 7 tesla scanner. Dielectric loading of the magnet bore by the subject reduces the cutoff frequency below the Larmor frequency, allowing a traveling wave to propagate along the bore. Large field-of-view images have been obtained of the head, neck and shoulders. Although transmission is relatively low efficiency, a localized phased array can be used as the receiver coil for sensitive detection and parallel imaging.