• Progress in Superconductivity and Cryogenics
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• v.14 no.1
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• pp.44-47
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• 2012

The substantial improvement of the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) can be achieved with small-size samples or low-field MRI system by high-temperature superconducting(HTS) RF coil. The typical HTS RF coil made of HTS thin film is expensive and is limited the coil geometry to planar surface coil. In this study, commercial Bi-2223 HTS tapes was used as RF coil for a 0.35T permanent MRI system. It has advantages of both much lower cost and easier fabrication over HTS thin film coil. SNR gain of the image obtained from the HTS RF coil over a conventional Cu RF coil at room temperature was about 2.4-fold and 1.9-fold using the spin echo pulse sequence and gradient echo pulse sequence respectively.

• Investigative Magnetic Resonance Imaging
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.75-78
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• 1997

A dual birdcage RF coil is proposed for MRI and MRA of the human leg. The proposed coil c can be used to cover the whole human leg by imaging upper and lower parts of the leg separately. In the conventional leg imaging scheme using a single RF coil, the leg has to be r relocated when changing the position of the RF coil thus causing problems in matching the i images from two sets of coils. When using the proposed dual RF coil, however, only the bed h has to be moved to select the imaging region while only one part of the dual coil is used each t time by using current switching and PIN diodes. The utility of proposed coil has been verified b by volunteer MRI and MRA and the imaging results show that the coil is useful for the clinical MRI and MRA of the leg.

• Proceedings of the Korea Institute of Applied Superconductivity and Cryogenics Conference
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• 2000.02a
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• pp.173-176
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• 2000

MRI magnet has generally multi-section coil configurations to generate highly homogeneous magnetic field. Each coil is bridged by a shunt resistor to protect the superconducting magnet during quench. In order to optimize the shunt resistor, self inductance of each coil and mutual inductances between coils should be determined beforehand. Therefore, we calculated the self and the mutual inductances of MRI magnet with OPERA program for electromagnetic analysis.

• Journal of the Korean Magnetic Resonance Society
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.25-36
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• 2003

The performance of radio frequency (RF) coils, used in MRI units, is determined by the image uniformity and the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). Birdcage and surface coils are commonly used. A birdcage coil provides a good image uniformity while a surface coil produces a high SNR. In this study, therefore, a staircase coil was designed from a standard version of a birdcage coil, with some structural changes to increase SNR while maintaining image uniformity. In phantom experiments, the improvement of the image to uniformity and the SNR increase of the staircase coil compared with the values for the birdcage coil were about 3.5% and 35%, respectively. In clinical experiment, the SNR increase of the staircase coil, compared with the value for the birdcage coil was about 40% in bone, muscle and blood-vessel tissues. These results show that the performance of the staircase coil was very improved over the standard birdcage coil in terms of SNR, and that image uniformity was maintained. Therefore, the staircase coil designed by this study should be useful in experimental and clinical l.5T MRI systems, and this coil offers an alternative method of quadrature detection.

• Proceedings of the KOSOMBE Conference
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• v.1996 no.11
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• pp.161-164
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• 1996

An actively-shielded $r^{2}$-gradient coil has been developed for brain localized MRI or MRS. Spatial localization is very useful for spatial volume selection in MRI or MR Spectroscopy(MRS). The radial(or $R^{2}-$) gradient coil is useful in reducing the artifact or in improving the SNR by selecting the volume with less number of RF pulses. It is, however, difficult to implement the coil with a gradient intensity strong enough to use it for practical whole-body MRI system. For example, the smallest volume size for selection is just 6 cm in diameter with a 250 Ampere of current driving for a whole-body system (in case of 70-cm-diameter). In this study, an asymetric $r^{2}$-coil with a small diameter of 35 cm has been designed and implemented for brain localized MRI or MRS. An 8-rod high-pass-type birdcage RF coil has also been implemented. The coil set has been developed for 1.0 Tesla Medison MRI system and its performance has been verified experimentally.

• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
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• 2007.04a
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• pp.61-63
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• 2007

In high field (> 3 T) MR imaging, the magnetic field inhomogeneity in the target object increases due to the nonuniform electro-magnetic characteristics and relatively high Larmor frequency. Especially in the body imaging, the effect causes more serious problems resulting in locally high SAR(Specific Absorption Ratio). In this paper, we propose an optimized parallel-transmission RF coil element structure and show the utility of the coil by FDTD simulations to overcome the unwanted effects. Three types of TX coil elements are tested to maximize the efficiency and their driving patterns(amplitude and phase) optimized to have adequate field homogeneity, proper SAR level, and sufficient field strength. For the proposed coil element of 25 cm ${\times}$ 8 cm loop structure with 12 channels for a 3.0 T body coil, the 73% field non-uniformity without optimization was reduced to about 26% after optimization of driving patterns. The experimental as well as simulation results show the utility of the proposed parallel driving scheme is clinically useful for (ultra) high field MRI.

• Proceedings of the KSMRM Conference
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• 2001.11a
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• pp.149-149
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• 2001

목적： Birdcage coil보다 SNR이 높은 Surface coil을 이용하여 시각 자극에 대한 반응 정도의 차이를 보이고자 한다. 대상 및 방법： 연구 개발 중인 Magnum 3.0T로 영상을 얻었다. 실험 대상자는 정상인 지원자로 하였고, 10Hz로 깜박거리는 발광다이오드를 이용하여 시각 자극을 실행하였다. 일정 paradigm으로 얻어진 영상은 SPM으로 분석하였다.

• Proceedings of the KSMRM Conference
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• 2001.11a
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• pp.143-143
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• 2001

목적： 현재 3.0T MRI system은 세계적으로 개발이 진행되고 있는 가운데, 3.0T에서 사용할 수 있는 RF coil의 개발이 시급한 상황이다. 1.0T 및 1.5T MRI 와는 달리 3.0T에서 사용할 수 있는 Body coil 및 그에 따른 High power RF amplifier 제작에 많은 제약이 있다. 작은 용량의 RF amplifier를 이용하여 신체의 부분을 촬영 하고자 한다면, Tx/Rx 가능한 coil을 이용하면 가능할 것이다. 이러한 이유로 본 연구에서는 Tx/Rx 가능한 Quadrature type C-spine RF coil을 설계, 제작하여 3.0T 고자장 자기공명 영상장치에서의 임상진단 활용범위를 확대하였다.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.11 no.12
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• pp.4891-4895
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• 2010

RF coil is an important component of the Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) system and the performance of RF coil is one of major factors for high SNR images. Sensitivity and RF field uniformity are parameters for evaluating RF coil performance. Since the B1 field is induced by RF coil, MR signal is strongly affected by RF coil structure and arrangement. In receiving MR signal, the RF coil sensitivity to MR Signal is also determined by the induced B1 field of RF coil. Therefore, the spatial distribution of B1 field must be verified. In this work, we performed computer simulation of the basic RF coil structures using Matlab and verified their sensitivity and uniformity through their B1 field distribution. This work will be useful for the advanced multi-channel RF coil design.

• Journal of Sensor Science and Technology
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• v.26 no.4
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• pp.245-250
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• 2017

A novel method to implement a birdcage-type receiving coil sensor for use in a magnetic resonance imaging(MRI) system has been demonstrated employing a flexible printed circuit board (FPCB) fabrication technique. Unlike the conventional methods, the two-dimensional shape of the coil sensor is first implemented as a FPCB and then it is attached to the surface of a cylindrical supporting structure to implement the three-dimensional birdcage-type coil sensor. The proposed method is very effective to implement object-specific MRI coil sensors especially for small animal measurements in research and preclinical applications since the existing well-developed FPCB-based techniques can easily meet the requirements on accuracies and costs during coil implement process. The performances of the coil sensor verified through $^1H$ 1.5T MRI measurements for small animals and it showed excellent characteristics by providing a high spatial precision and a high signal-to-noise ratio.