Abstract #0834

Integrated ΔB0/Rx coil array for improved spinal cord imaging at 3T

Ryan Topfer¹, Alexandru Foias¹, Nibardo Lopez Rios¹, Angel Chauffray^1,2, Grégoire Germain¹, Nick Arango³, Lawrence L. Wald^4,5, Jason P. Stockmann^4,5, and Julien Cohen-Adad^1,6

¹NeuroPoly Lab, Institute of Biomedical Engineering, Polytechnique Montreal, Montreal, QC, Canada, ²École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland, ³Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, United States, ⁴A. A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Massachusetts General Hospital, Charlestown, MA, United States, ⁵Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, United States, ⁶Functional Neuroimaging Unit, CRIUGM, Université de Montréal, Montreal, QC, Canada

Spinal cord imaging is hampered by static and respiration-induced dynamic variations of B0, causing serious issues for EPI-based protocols and spectroscopy. Integrated ΔB0/Rx arrays could provide an effective means to further compensate small-scale variations, complementary to the existing spherical harmonic coils. Here, we designed, built and tested in a human subject an 8-channel integrated ΔB0/Rx coil for the cervical spinal cord. Results showed improvements for correcting static field variations as well as respiratory-induced variations. Future studies will investigate dynamic and real time shimming applications for the spinal cord.

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