A Study on the Development of a Phase Array Coil for MRI of a Mouse in a 3.0-T High Magnetic Field

Abstract

In this study, we manufactured an animal-dedicated radio-frequency (B,F) coil with a small diameter and multiple channels that could improve both the image uniformity and the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR,). Quality of the images from the manufactured coil was assessed and compared to that of images from the loop coil used primarily for animal experiments; the coil had the same diameter. For our experiments, we used Balb/c nude mice, which are appropriate for human studies, because they have outstanding blood vessels and are easy to rear, and a 3.0-T system. The mouse body coil was a receive-only (Rx-only) coil with four channels. The coil had a diameter of 40 mm, a length of 100 mm, and an overlapping distance between channels of 4 mm. A dual echo steady state (DESS) 2D pulse sequence, the type most frequently used for animal experiments, was applied. To evaluate the SNR of the coil cylinder with a different numbers of channels, we used the loop coil typically designated for human use and the manufactured coil specific for animal use to obtain and compare phantom and mouse images. According to the results, the image analysis, the image uniformity and the SNR were high for the image obtained from the animal-specific coil that had many channels. In conclusion, our experiment demonstrated that a 3.0-T phase array coil with multiple channels designed for animal use only produced images with excellent uniformity and SNR.