Marc Stephen Ramirez1, James Andrew Bankson1
1Department of Imaging Physics, The
University of
A
variety of receive array coil configurations were simulated to determine
acceptable parallel imaging reduction factors for use in accelerated
multiple-mouse MRI. Based on these
results, timing of accelerated multi-mouse DCE-MRI protocols were predicted
and compared with timing of a single-mouse, single-coil DCE-MRI protocol to
estimate improvements in throughput.
The coil configuration that yielded the highest multi-mouse throughput
improvement was determined. A
phased-array coil based on the optimal configuration was designed,
fabricated, and used for phantom imaging to verify that the predicted
reduction factor per animal maintained image quality suitable for routine
small-animal imaging studies.