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 MRI
Hardware Development
The goal of this project is to improve image quality
by developing custom hardware. Much of this work focuses on building transmit
and receive coils for different imaging applications.
A coil is one or more loops of an electrical
conductor that produces a magnetic field. Magnetic resonance
imaging uses coils both to excite nuclear spins and to
detect the precession of those spins as they relax toward
equilibrium. These coils are referred to as "RF" coils
because the resonant frequency of the spins lies within
the radio-frequency spectrum. A single coil may be used
as both a transmitter and a receiver, or a transmit-only
coil may be combined with one or more receive-only coils.
Optimizing coil design has a tremendous
effect on the signal-to-noise ratio of magnetic resonance
images. Some of the coils developed at LCNI include:
• A transmit-only head coil for
human and animal imaging
• Various transmit-receive birdcage coils for small animal imaging
• A two-coil phased-array for imaging the visual cortex
• A four coil array for simultaneous imaging of multiple mice
• Liquid-nitrogen cooled surface coils
• Other small surface coils, including new technology for active
detuning of inductively coupled coils
Click
here for Coil Gallery
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