Significant increase of the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) is possible by cooling receive coils to cryogenic temperatures, if they are not highly sample noise dominated. Conventionally, the noise of the preamplifier is excluded leading to an overestimation of the achievable SNR gain. In this work, we show that for the case of a small-animal birdcage coil for 13C at 3T cooled with liquid nitrogen to 77K, the SNR is overestimated by approximately 40% if the effect of the room temperature preamplifier is excluded. Hence, the preamplifier should either be included in the SNR gain estimation or cooled with the coil.
This abstract and the presentation materials are available to members only; a login is required.