Design of phased array coils for increasing the signal-to-noise ratio of magnetic resonance imaging

This paper introduces a method for increasing the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) for magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) by phased array coils. The SNR increase is first theoretically explained and then demonstrated in a simulated MRI system. It is shown by simulation results that the SNR can be increased with the number of coils in the array by properly combining the output of each coil element, and the combiner coefficients are determined by decoupling matrix.