Abstract #1126

An 8/15-Channel Tx/Rx Head Neck RF Coil Combination with Semi-Dynamic B1 Shimming for Improved fMRI of the Cerebellum at 7 T

Viktor Pfaffenrot^1,2, Sascha Brunheim^1,2, Stefan H.G. Rietsch^1,2, Thomas M. Ernst^1,3, Oliver Kraff¹, Stephan Orzada¹, and Harald H. Quick^1,2

¹Erwin L. Hahn Institute for Magnetic Resonance Imaging, University Duisburg-Essen, Essen, Germany, ²High Field and Hybrid MR Imaging, University Hospital Essen, Essen, Germany, ³Department of Neurology, University Hospital Essen, Essen, Germany

Functional MRI of the human cerebellum is challenging at ultrahigh fields, since conventional RF head coils hardly cover the cerebellum with sufficient signal-to-noise ratio and B₁⁺-inhomogeneities introduce challenges. In order to overcome these problems, a coil combination consisting of an 8ch transceiver head coil and a 7ch receive only array are combined to improve imaging of the whole brain with special focus on the cerebellum. A ‘semi-dynamic’ B₁⁺-shimming technique is introduced which provides a tSNR-gain of 29 % and voxels with higher significance in a finger tapping fMRI experiment when comparing the coil combination to a 32ch receive head coil.

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