Abstract #4010

A 3T Sodium and Proton Breast Array

Joshua D. Kaggie¹,², J. Rock Hadley¹, James Badal³, John R. Campbell³, Daniel J. Park³, Dennis L. Parker¹, Glen Morrell¹, Rexford D. Newbould⁴, Alexandra F. Wood³, Neal K. Bangerter,¹³

¹Utah Center for Advanced Imaging Research, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, United States; ²Physics, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, United States; ³Electrical and Computer Engineering, Brigham Young University, Provo, UT, United States; ⁴Imanova Centre for Imaging Sciences, London, United Kingdom

This work presents a novel dual resonant breast coil design for combined sodium and proton breast MRI with increased SNR. The coil consists of a 7-channel sodium receive phased array, a large sodium transmit coil, and a 4-channel hydrogen transceive array. A coil layout with intersecting sodium and proton elements to decrease sodium shielding effects is also demonstrated. The new phased array coil demonstrates a 2-5x improvement in SNR for sodium imaging when compared to a simple single-loop dual resonant design. Improved sodium SNR will potentially enable better assessment of small breast lesions and more accurate measures of tissue.