Electromagnetic Modeling of High-Channel Count Head Receiver Arrays for ultra-High Field MRI

Electromagnetic simulations of ultra-high field receive coil arrays featuring 32, 64, and 128 channels are currently being performed to support of head imaging coil development for 7 and 10.5 Tesla MRI systems. Ultra-High field is a powerful tool for research and medical diagnostics. For typical head and brain imaging applications, it is desirable to have many receiver channels to take advantage of parallel imaging techniques to provide acceleration and reduce susceptibility artifacts [1] , [2]. Acceleration comes at the cost of SNR, so maximizing signal to noise ratio (SNR) is critical for optimal imaging and spectroscopy. While high channel count receive arrays will have adequate SNR in the peripheral regions of the brain, SNR in the central regions poses a challenge. Increased static magnetic field is expected to improve the central SNR [3] and is one of the main research goals of the 10.5T system at Center for Magnetic Resonance Research (CMRR) at the University of Minnesota. A series of coils is currently under development at CMRR to investigate the relative merits of field strength, receive channel count, and geometry. These coils feature an outer transmitter housing with an exchangeable head conforming receiver assembly with nominal channel counts of 32, 64, and 128.