1Laboratory
of Functional and Metabolic Imaging,
Ecole Polytechnique Fdrale de Lausanne, Lausanne, Vaud, Switzerland;
2Center for Medical Physics and Biomedical Engineering, Medical
University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria; 3Department of Radiology,
University of Lausanne, Lausanne, Vaud, Switzerland; 4cole
Polytechnique Fdrale de Lausanne, Lausanne, Vaud, Switzerland; 5Department
of Radiology, Universities of Lausanne and Geneva, Lausanne, Geneva,
Switzerland
Carbon-13 MRS is an inherently low-sensitivity technique, making detection signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) critical. An important step in the optimization of SNR is the design of the RF coil. The probe must be capable of simultaneous transmission at the 1H frequency while receiving at the 13C frequency for J-decoupling. Especially when operating at high-field, this makes SAR limitations challenging. In this abstract we demonstrate a quadrature-13C/quadrature-1H surface coil, using traps to decouple the 13C loops from the 1H loops. This design increases the 13C detection sensitivity without increasing power deposition at the 1H frequency. We compare the performance to a standard linear-13C/quadrature-1H coil using glycogen detection in the human calf at 7T. An improvement in SNR by a factor of 1.8 was shown.