Bobo Hu1, Gopal Varma2, Stephen
Keevil2, Chris Randell3, Paul Glover4
1Sir Peter Mansfield Magnetic Resonance
Centre , University of Nottingham, Nottingham, United Kingdom; 2St
Thomass Hospital, Kings College, London, United Kingdom; 3Pulseteq
Ltd., Wotton-under-Edge, Gloucestershire, United Kingdom; 4Sir
Peter Mansfield Magnetic Resonance Centre, University of Nottingham,
Nottingham, United Kingdom
The
performance of a liquid
nitrogen cooled receive-only copper coil to acquire micron scale high
resolution mouse imaging on a 3T whole body scanner is investigated. In this
work a novel cryostat design, which provides easy access for small animal
samples, is described. The receive coil is a 2 cm diameter copper coil with
active decoupling during transmission. The Q factor of the coil has been
enhanced by 60% after cooling down for 1 hour to reach 120 K, and the SNR
performance has increased by 2 fold compared with the room temperature
version of the same coil.