Abstract
Shimming, active and/or passive, is indispensable for most MR (magnetic resonance) magnets where homogeneous magnetic fields are required within target spaces. Generally, shimming consists of two steps, field mapping and correcting of fields, and they are recursively repeated until the target field homogeneity is reached. Thus, accuracy of the field mapping is crucial for fast and efficient shimming of MR magnets. For an accurate shimming, a "magnetic" center, which is a mathematical origin for harmonic analysis, must be carefully defined, Although the magnetic center is in general identical to the physical center of a magnet, it is not rare that both centers are different particularly in HTS (high temperature superconducting) magnets of which harmonic field errors, especially high orders, are significantly dependent on a location of the magnetic center. This paper presents a new algorithm, based on a field mapping theory with harmonic analysis, to define the best magnetic center of an MR magnet in terms of minimization of pre-shimming field errors. And the proposed algorithm is tested with simulation under gaussian noise environment.
