Self-Decoupling Elements of 8-Channel 7T Head Antenna

Hideta Habara¹, Yoshitaka Bito¹, Hisaaki Ochi¹, Yoshihisa Soutome¹, Yukio Kaneko¹, Masayoshi Dohata^1,2, Hiroyuki Takeuchi², Tetsuhiko Takahashi²

Multichannel transmit antennas are important for higher field MRI because the RF shimming and transmit sense methods are very effective for correcting B1 inhomogeneity. However, decoupling of the multichannel antenna to the neighborhood channels is difficult. To overcome this problem, we propose to replace linear conductive elements with meandering or snaking ones. An 8-channel 7T head antenna was modeled and the S-parameters and B1+ map were calculated using electromagnetic field simulation. An ordinary microstrip line antenna was also modeled for comparison. The S12 parameter of the snaking elements achieved -12 dB without any decoupling capacitor.