A Fully Digital RF Pulse Generator Designed for Multiple Transmission Channels

Andr Kuehne¹, Werner Hoffmann¹, Frank Seifert¹

Parallel excitation (PEX) is a key technique to tackle RF issues in high and ultra-field MR. Since multi-channel transmit arrays are still rare and an upgrade of existing scanners using standard hardware is limited by cost and size of the equipment, a novel approach using direct digital signal generation is presented. Our set-up features four channels but the design is capable of supplying up to twenty independent RF channels for frequencies up to 300 MHz. We present measurements of phase jitter and first static phase images using a 4-channel transmit/receive coil array demonstrating the feasibility of this approach.