An adaptable mri radiofrequency breast coil: Evaluation of size, coil diameter, and uniformity

Abstract

Three quadrature transmit/receive radiofrequency magnetic resonance imaging breast coils were designed and built. The coils are geometrically equivalent but were scaled for different breast sizes. The coils were tested using a 4-T Bruker/Siemens whole-body scanner. We used different coil sizes to establish whether it is necessary to match coil size to load size. Moreover, our work investigated how the coil configuration can be changed to improve signal uniformity in the acquired images. We found that improvements can be gained by carefully matching the coil to the sample. In addition, we propose a coil layout that allows images quality to be improved, as measured by the signal-to-noise ratio and field uniformity of the coil. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.