First in vivo Imaging of the Mouse Brain at 4.7 T Using a Subcentimeter HTS Surface Coil

Simon Auguste Lambert¹, Marie Poirier-Quinot¹, Ludovic De Rochefort², Jean-christophe Ginefri², Luc Darrasse¹

For field strengths of 4.7 T and above, cryocooled probes based on normal coil conductors at 30 K have been commercially developed and afford SNR gain factors of 2-4. Only few studies relate sensitivity improvement using superconducting coil above 3 T. A particularly challenging issue with HTS coils for in vivo applications at high field is the design of sub-centimeter coils in order to achieve SNR gains overcoming the limits of normal conducting cryocooled probes. This is the first report of in vivo imaging using a subcentimeter cryocooled HTS 6 mm mean diameter surface coil at 4.7 T.