Martin Tabbert1, Marco Motz1, Marcos Lopez2, Erhard Pfrommer1, Sven Junge1
1Bruker BioSpin MRI GmbH, Ettlingen, Germany; 2Universitt Wrzburg, Germany
With this study we present a novel 16 channel array-coil with a transmitter coil for investigations on rats which is optimized for rat abdominal imaging. Decoupling electronics, phase shifters and preamplifiers are included in the coil. The receive-signals are amplified with 16 built-in low-impedance preamplifiers. An insulating network that reduces the coil-coupling by additional 6dB was designed. Compared to a quadrature resonator, the coil shows an SNR improvement of the 16-channel coil in the center of a transversal slice by a factor of 1.1 up to 2.5 regarding the periphery of the VOI. All advantages of parallel imaging techniques on small animals can be utilised, e.g. rats can be examined in shorter times by using accelerated 2D/3D imaging.