An Improved Element Design for 64-Channel Planar Imaging.

Investigation of highly accelerated MRI has developed into a lively corner in the hardware and methodology arena in recent years. At the extreme of (one-dimensional) acceleration, our group introduced Single Echo Acquisition (SEA) imaging, in which the need to phase encode a 64×N(readout) image is eliminated and replaced with the well-localized spatial information obtained from an array of 64 very narrow, long, parallel coils. The narrow coil width (2mm) that facilitates this is accompanied by a concomitant constraint on the useful imaging depth. This note describes a 64-element planar array, constructed within the same 8×13cm total footprint as the original SEA array, still enabling full acceleration in one dimension, but with an element design modified to increase the imaging depth. This was accomplished by lowering the outer conducting legs of the planar pair with respect to the center conductor and adding a geometric decoupling configuration away from the imaging field of view. The element has been called a dual-plane pair in that the current carrying rungs in the imaging FOV function exactly as the planar pair, but are simply placed in two separate planes (sides of PCB in this case).