Barret Daniels1,2, Yu Li1, Randy
Giaquinto1, Wolfgang Loew1, Ronald Pratt1,
Charles Dumoulin1
1Imaging Research Center,
Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, Cincinnati, OH, United States;
2Bioengineering, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, OH, United
States
Conventional active MR tracking utilizes the body coil to excite all spins within the volume of interest and micro-coils built into devices for signal reception. This approach often results in a signal with a complicated phase sensitivity profile making tracking difficult. In this work, we overcome this challenge by using the micro-coil for both transmitting and receiving. Transmitting with micro coils excites only those spins near the micro coil and imparts the same phase sensitivity profile for spin excitation and reception. This results in a more robust peak with higher SNR and improved tracking accuracy.