A Novel Flexible Electrotextile 3T MRI RF Coil Array for Carotid Artery Imaging: Design, Characterization, and Prototyping

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is one of the most powerful imaging modality in clinics and is essential for the diagnosis of strokes through carotid artery imaging. The limiting factor for high-quality MRI is the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) performance of the radio frequency (RF) coils. The current RF surface coils, however, are made of rigid or semiflexible materials with very limited bending properties. As a result, their SNR is limited because they cannot be placed very close to the imaging area, thus receiving noises from parts of the human body, which are not intended to be imaged. Taking advantage of the computerized embroidery and laser cutting technology, in this paper, we utilize electrotextile to design, fabricate, and measure multilayer RF coil array system for 3 Tesla (3T) MRI to improve the SNR performance. The proposed RF coil array system provides an ergonomic and high-performance solution to the 3T MRI systems. A roadmap to systematically design electrotextile RF coil arrays is proposed. RF coil array is characterized to have the accurate resonant frequency, good impedance matching, and low mutual coupling. In addition, magnetic field distribution, bending effects, and human body effects are also discussed. A systematic method to characterize the performance of the electrotextile pattern is studied and used to assist the development and performance characterization. Finally, the high resolution and high SNR images of various kinds of phantoms are obtained using the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) Antenna Lab electrotextile coil array after its integration with the 3T MRI scanners at UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine Translational Research Imaging Center. Compared with the conventional surface coil, more than 10 dB SNR increase is observed at the depth of 0.5 cm and 3 dB increase at the depth of 3 cm.