G Shajan1, Jens Hoffmann1, Klaus Scheffler1, 2, Rolf Pohmann1
1Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Tuebingen, Baden Wuerttemberg, Germany; 2Department for Neuroimaging, University Hospital, , Tuebingen, Germany
The well known transmit field inhomogeneity at ultra high field strengths, caused by the shorter RF wavelength in tissue, is most severe in the lower half of the brain. A dual-row 16 element transmit coil that gives the additional flexibility to shim for the lower brain was designed. Numerical investigation revealed excellent static B1 shimming performance. in vivo shimming on a coronal slice demonstrates the ability to improve the transmit field in brain regions that are challenging to image using single-row transmit arrays. The coil can be combined with receive-only arrays for highly sensitive parallel signal reception.