Jinfeng Tian1,
Devashish Shrivastava1, Gregor Adriany1, John Strupp1,
Scott Schillak2, Jay Zhang3, Kamil Ugurbil1,
University of Minnesota University of Minnesota Vaughan1
1Center
for Magnetic Resonance, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, United
States; 2Virtumed, LLC, Minneapolis, MN, United States; 3Cardiology,
University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, United States
Previous research has demonstrated feasibility of 3D RF arrays in mitigating RF inhomogeneities for ultra-high field MRI applications. Three RF coil designs were simulated to investigate their relative |B1+| and SAR performance in 7T whole-head MRI. A 16-ch 2D TEM reference coil was compared to a 30-channel, 3D TEM array, and a 32 channel, 3D loop array. All coils were circularly polarized in this initial study by numerical simulation. The 3D loop array exhibited a higher |B1+| on the central trans-axial slice, together with higher mean SAR on all three central slices, and higher peak 1gram and 10gram SAR across the whole head. Advantages of these 3D arrays will be further explored through B1+ shimming models.