Jean-Guy Belliveau1, 2, Kyle Gilbert1, Mohamed Abou-Khousa1, Ravi Menon1, 2
1Robarts Research Institute, London, Ontario, Canada; 2Biomedical Engineering, University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada
We perform an engineering analysis on common performance metrics for circumferentially shielded radiofrequency coils for MRI. Various circumferentially shielded radiofrequency coils have previously been presented; however, an in-depth analysis of the effect of shielding on coil performance has not previously been undertaken. Our analysis demonstrates that (1) shielding helps with multiple element isolation; (2) the nature of the shielding geometry can potentially increase local SNR and decrease SAR; and (3) shielding has advantages for B1+ shimming techniques and parallel imaging.