Abstract #1048

Ratio-adjustable power splitters for array-compressed parallel transmission and RF shimming

Xinqiang Yan^1,2, Zhipeng Cao^1,3, and William A. Grissom^1,2,3

¹Institute of Imaging Science, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, United States, ²Department of Radiology and Radiological Sciences, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, United States, ³Department of Biomedical Engineering, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, United States

Array-compressed parallel transmission was recently proposed as a way to reduce the number of RF power amplifiers required for many-coil parallel transmission. This is achieved by connecting a large number of coils to a small number of channels via an array compression network that implements optimized coil-to-channel combinations using power splitters, attenuators and phase shifters. Previous array compression networks used tunable attenuators, but this resulted in significant power dissipation in the network. Here we propose novel ratio-adjustable power splitters (RAPS), which perform the combined duties of power splitting and attenuating, and will enable array compression networks with minimal power loss. The splitters could also be useful for RF shimming with a single amplifier, with the ability to tune the shims by adjusting transmission line lengths.

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