Obtaining sufficient SNR in MRI of the prostate can be problematic without the use of an endorectal coil (ERC). We have constructed a lightweight, highly flexible receive-only surface coil array consisting of 8 recently developed AIR coil elements (GE Healthcare, Waukesha, WI, USA). This work compares the AIR coil array to commercial arrays commonly used for prostate imaging with and without the inclusion of an ERC. Initial phantom results show that the AIR coil array has approximately 2.5-3× higher SNR than the GE 32 channel anterior body/GEM posterior array when no ERC is used and approaches ERC SNR performance.
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