Alexander C. Wright1, Michael Wald1, Tom Connick1, Jeremy Magland1, Hee Kwon Song1, Branimir Vasilic1, Rosti Lemdiasov2, Reinhold Ludwig2, Felix W. Wehrli1
1Laboratory for Structural NMR Imaging, Department of Radiology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA; 2Insight MRI, Worcester, MA, USA
We have designed and constructed a Helmholtz-pair local transmit coil with a decoupled 4-element receive phased array for imaging the distal tibia in a whole-body 7 T MRI scanner. The coils are described and initial experiences imaging the trabecular bone of volunteers is discussed. Image data were of high quality and showed a gain in SNR of about 3x for imaging the same individual at 7 T and using an identical 3 T version of the 4-element receive array.