An Inexpensive and Programmable RF Transmitter Setup for Two-coil CASL.

An inexpensive and programmable RF transmitter for two-coil continuous arterial spin labeling (CASL) system is presented in this paper. While previous implementations of two-coil CASL require the expensive MR RF instruments, the present design utilizes a low-cost system on chip direct digital synthesizer and a mini-size communication RF power amplifier to generate the labeling RF waveform without sacrificing RF performance. Compared with a single RF channel two-coil CASL approach, this design requires minimal scanner hardware modifications. Moreover, this design offers a programmable interface for easy sequence setup and debugging. Performance and ease of use are validated experimentally.