Mid-Range Coil Array for Magnetic Resonance Imaging of Small Animals

The vast majority of articles on MRI RF coils over the past two decades have focused on large coils, where sample losses dominate, or on micro-coils, where sample and capacitor losses are negligible. Few have addressed the mid-range coils, seen in the majority of small-animal applications, where all the sources of loss are important, for example, mouse brain and body coils from 125 to 750 MHz. We developed a four-saddle coil array for magnetic resonance imaging of small animals. The saddle coil elements in the array were evenly distributed to cover the rat's head. The coil array was tuned to the resonant frequency of 170 MHz. Due to the close proximity of the coil elements, it was necessary to decouple the coil array using nonmagnetic trimmers and, it was operated in the transceiver mode and quadrature-driven. To test the coil array performance at high field, phantom images were acquired with our saddle coil array and standard pulse sequences on a research-dedicated 4 Tesla scanner. Ex vivo brain images of a rat were also acquired, and proved the feasibility of the scaled version of a saddle coil array and, its compatibility with standard pulse sequences when used in a high field magnetic resonance imager