Robin Etzel1,2, Choukri Mekkaoui3, Ekaterina S Ivshina4, Alina Scholz1, Markus W May1, Nicolas Kutscha1, Matthäus Poniatowski1, Chaimaa Chemlali1, Anpreet Ghotra1, Sam-Luca JD Hansen1, Timothy G Reese3, Lawrence L Wald3, Andreas H Mahnken2, and Boris Keil1
1Institute of Medical Physics and Radiation Protection, Department of Life Science Engineering, TH Mittelhessen University of Applied Sciences, Giessen, Germany, 2Philipps-University of Marburg, Department of Diagnostic and Interventional Radiology, Marburg, Germany, 3Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts General Hospital, Department of Radiology, A.A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Boston, MA, United States, 4Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, United States
1Institute of Medical Physics and Radiation Protection, Department of Life Science Engineering, TH Mittelhessen University of Applied Sciences, Giessen, Germany, 2Philipps-University of Marburg, Department of Diagnostic and Interventional Radiology, Marburg, Germany, 3Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts General Hospital, Department of Radiology, A.A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Boston, MA, United States, 4Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, United States
Three 64-channel arrays were constructed and evaluated to determine the optimum configuration for highly accelerated in vivo cardiac diffusion-weighted imaging. The configuration with a non-uniformly distributed loop density demonstrated most favorable cardiac imaging performance.
Figure 1: The three constructed array coils with covers open: (A) symmetrically distributed equally-sized loops in an overlapped arrangement, (B) a gapped array with symmetrically distributed equally-sized loops, and (C) a non-uniformly loop density variation.
Figure 5: Coil comparison in a healthy volunteer. Color-coded maps of the SNR using each coil at mid-ventricle (A). Statistical comparison of the SNR for each coil at specific regions in the myocardium (B). Tractogram of the entire myocardium (left and right ventricle), color-coded by the myofiber helix angle (C).