Abstract #3472

Design and Construction of an Interchangeable RF Coil System for Rodent Spinal Cord MR Imaging

Ming Lu^1,2,3, Gary Drake^1,2, Feng Wang^1,2, Chaoqi Mu^1,4, Limin Chen^1,2, John C. Gore^1,2,4, and Xinqiang Yan^1,2

¹Vanderbilt University Institute of Imaging Science, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, TN, United States, ²Department of Radiology and Radiological Sciences, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, TN, United States, ³College of nuclear equipment and nuclear engineering, Yantai University, Yantai, China, ⁴Department of Biomedical Engineering, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, United States

Multiparametric MRI at high field provides comprehensive information to assess structural and functional changes that are important for clinical diagnosis and for evaluating therapies. Injuries may occur at different levels of the lumbar and thoracic cord, and the number of segments injured and their depths may vary along the spine, so it is challenging to build one universal RF coil that exhibits high-performance for all spinal cord imaging applications. We therefore developed an interchangeable RF coil system for a 9.4T small animal MRI scanner, and found the specialized coil has 2.4-fold SNR improvement compared to a commercial general-purpose sized coil.

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