Quadrature transceive wireless coil: Design concept and application for bilateral breast MRI at 1.5 T

• Published in: Magnetic resonance in medicine Vol. 89; no. 3; pp. 1251 - 1264
• Main Authors: Puchnin, Viktor, Jandaliyeva, Aigerim, Hurshkainen, Anna, Solomakha, Georgiy, Nikulin, Anton, Petrova, Polina, Lavrenteva, Anna, Andreychenko, Anna, Shchelokova, Alena
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States Wiley Subscription Services, Inc 01-03-2023
• Subjects: Arrays; Breast; breast MRI; Coils; Design; Equipment Design; Female; Healthy Volunteers; Helmholtz coil; Humans; Image quality; Linear polarization; Magnetic resonance imaging; Magnetic Resonance Imaging - methods; Mathematical models; metasolenoid; Noise reduction; Phantoms, Imaging; quadrature coil; Quadratures; Scanners; Signal-To-Noise Ratio; Simulation; SNR enhancement; Spirals; transmit efficiency; wireless coil; wireless coil; SNR enhancement; breast MRI; Helmholtz coil; metasolenoid; transmit efficiency; quadrature coil
• ISSN: 0740-3194; 1522-2594
• DOI: 10.1002/mrm.29507

Purpose
Development of a novel quadrature inductively driven transceive wireless coil for breast MRI at 1.5 T.
Methods
A quadrature wireless coil (HHMM‐coil) design has been developed as a combination of two linearly polarized coils: a pair of ‘metasolenoid’ coils (MM‐coil) and a pair of Helmholtz‐type coils (HH‐coil). The MM‐coil consisted of an array of split‐loop resonators. The HH‐coil design included two electrically connected flat spirals. All the wireless coils were coupled to a whole‐body birdcage coil. The HHMM‐coil was studied and compared to the linear coils in terms of transmit and SAR efficiencies via numerical simulations. A prototype of HHMM‐coil was built and tested on a 1.5 T scanner in a phantom and healthy volunteer. We also proposed an extended design of the HHMM‐coil and compared its performance to a dedicated breast array.
Results
Numerical simulations of the HHMM‐coil with a female voxel model have shown more than a 2.5‐fold increase in transmit efficiency and a 1.7‐fold enhancement of SAR efficiency compared to the linearly polarized coils. Phantom and in vivo imaging showed good agreement with the numerical simulations. Moreover, the HHMM‐coil provided good image quality, visualizing all areas of interest similar to a multichannel breast array with a 32% reduction in signal‐to‐noise ratio.
Conclusion
The proposed quadrature HHMM‐coil allows the B1+$$ {\mathrm{B}}_1^{+} $$‐field to be significantly better focused in the region‐of‐interest compared to the linearly polarized coils. Thus, the HHMM‐coil provides high‐quality breast imaging on a 1.5 T scanner using a whole‐body birdcage coil for transmit and receive.