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Wearable knee receive array coil for imaging at different flexion angles

Syed Saad Siddiq^1,2, Justin Ho^2,3, Billie Wang^2,3, Jerzy Walczyk^2,3, Karthik Lakshmanan^2,3, and Ryan Brown^2,3
¹Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, New York University Tandon School of Engineering, Brooklyn, NY, United States, ²Bernard and Irene Schwartz Center for Biomedical Imaging, Department of Radiology, New York University Grossman School of Medicine, New York, NY, United States, ³Center for Advanced Imaging Innovation and Research, Department of Radiology, New York University Grossman School of Medicine, New York, NY, United States

We constructed a six-channel flexible knee coil from off-the-shelf components, which included an elastic shell to maintain critical geometric overlap between neighbor coils. The array enables MRI during knee flexion while providing similar SNR as a rigid commercial coil.

Figure 1. Photographs of the flexible 6-channel array with the protective cover removed in order to view the electronics: (a) unfolded; each coil is loosely secured to the elastic shell with integrated buttons (white circles), (b) zoomed view of elastic pockets that maintain approximately critical geometric overlap between neighbors while allowing flexion, (c) applied to the knee in natural posture, and (d) applied to the flexed knee. Inset S₂₁ values in (c) and (d) show excellent decoupling between neighbor coils in both postures.

Figure 2. SNR maps acquired with the proposed flexible coil (top row) and commercial coil (bottom). The proposed coil provided similar SNR (within 3%) as the commercial coil in the central articular cartilage while enabling approximately 40° knee flexion (right column). The maps were normalized to the SNR value in the articular cartilage during knee flexion.