Marc Stephen Ramirez1, Yunyun Chen2,
Stephen Y. Lai2, James Andrew Bankson1
1The Department of Imaging
Physics, the University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX,
United States; 2The Department of Head & Neck Surgery, the
University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX, United States
The traditional multimouse MRI methodology in which volume coils are dedicated to many mice must be reconsidered for short routine imaging protocols due to unnecessary complication of preparing and scanning many animals simultaneously. Instead we propose imaging a more manageable number of mice faster by dedicating phased arrays to each mouse and employing parallel imaging (PI) techniques. An array consisting of five transmit and 15 receive coils was selected as a throughput-optimized configuration for the next generation of 16-channel small-animal MRI systems. Details of the fabrication, testing, and in vivo use of the system for PI-accelerated multiple-mouse MRI are described.