Comparison of Whole Body Transmit Coil Configurations for RF Shimming at 3T

Kay Nehrke¹, Ulrich Katscher¹, Peter Brnert¹, Ingmar Graesslin¹

Whole body MRI at 3T may be impeded by B1 transmit field inhomogeneities caused by the dielectric shortening of the RF wavelength. RF shimming techniques based on parallel transmission can strongly improve the image quality in clinical whole body applications. In this context, it is an important question, how the RF shimming performance depends on the chosen coil topology and, in particular, on the number of transmit channels. In the present work, an 8-channel transmit system is used for B1 mapping and shimming, providing the flexibility of emulating different coil configurations and comparing their RF shimming performance.