TY - JOUR
T1 - Superconducting single and phased-array probes for clinical and research MRI
AU - Wosik, Jaroslaw
AU - Xie, Lei Ming
AU - Nesteruk, Krzysztof
AU - Xue, Lian
AU - Bankson, James A.
AU - Hazle, John D.
N1 - Funding Information:
Manuscript received August 5, 2002. This work was supported in part by the State of Texas via Texas Center for Superconductivity and by Institute of Shuttle Space Operation. J. Wosik, L.-M. Xie, and L. Xue are with the Texas Center for Superconductivity and Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at University of Houston, Houston, TX 77204 USA (e-mail: jarek@uh.edu). K. Nesteruk is with the Institute of Physics, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warszawa, Poland. J. A. Bankson and J. D. Hazle are with Department of Imaging Physics, The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, TX USA. Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TASC.2003.814148
PY - 2003/6
Y1 - 2003/6
N2 - Significant improvement of the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR for magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) applications, in which the thermal noise of the rf receiver probe dominates the system noise can be achieved by cooling down a normal metal probe or by using superconductors. In this work, the SNR enhancement expected from using superconductors for single coil and/or phased array designs are calculated, discussed and compared with some experimental results. We also report on the design and fabrication of a 63.8 MHz probe (1.5 Tesla) consisting of patterned, copper or YBCO films deposited on both sides on a 5 cm LaAlO3 substrate. The unloaded Q of the normal metal probe at room temperature and at 77 K was about 400 and 1000, respectively, while the YBCO probe exhibited a Q of 40 000 at 77 K. Five-cm diameter probes cooled to 77 K were superior to their identically designed room temperature equivalents, and provided SNR gains at 1.5 Tesla of 3 and 2 times for YBCO and cooled normal metal, respectively. The application of superconducting coils in conjunction with recently developed techniques for significant reduction of MRI acquisition times by using parallel processing with phased array probes is discussed.
AB - Significant improvement of the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR for magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) applications, in which the thermal noise of the rf receiver probe dominates the system noise can be achieved by cooling down a normal metal probe or by using superconductors. In this work, the SNR enhancement expected from using superconductors for single coil and/or phased array designs are calculated, discussed and compared with some experimental results. We also report on the design and fabrication of a 63.8 MHz probe (1.5 Tesla) consisting of patterned, copper or YBCO films deposited on both sides on a 5 cm LaAlO3 substrate. The unloaded Q of the normal metal probe at room temperature and at 77 K was about 400 and 1000, respectively, while the YBCO probe exhibited a Q of 40 000 at 77 K. Five-cm diameter probes cooled to 77 K were superior to their identically designed room temperature equivalents, and provided SNR gains at 1.5 Tesla of 3 and 2 times for YBCO and cooled normal metal, respectively. The application of superconducting coils in conjunction with recently developed techniques for significant reduction of MRI acquisition times by using parallel processing with phased array probes is discussed.
KW - High temperature superconductors
KW - Magnetic resonance imaging
KW - Partial parallel imaging
KW - rf resonators
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U2 - 10.1109/TASC.2003.814148
DO - 10.1109/TASC.2003.814148
M3 - Conference article
AN - SCOPUS:0042440884
SN - 1051-8223
VL - 13
SP - 1050
EP - 1055
JO - IEEE Transactions on Applied Superconductivity
JF - IEEE Transactions on Applied Superconductivity
IS - 2 I
T2 - 2002 Applied Superconductivity Conference
Y2 - 4 August 2002 through 9 August 2002
ER -