The SENSE-Cage: A Half-Birdcage Volume Coil

T. P. Eagan, J. D. Willig-Onwuachi, S. M. Shvartsman, Y-C. N. Cheng, R. W. Brown Department of Phyiscs, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH, United States, Department of Radiology, University of California at Davis, Davis, CA, United States, Philips Medical Systems, Cleveland, OH, United States, Department of Physics, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH, United States Introduction In recent years, many coils have been proposed for parallel imaging applications. [1-5] Most of these designs are loop arrays that have been optimized for a particular parallel imaging application. For instance, it is now accepted that the use of non-overlapped loop coils improves SENSE performance even though on the face of it the coils have a stronger inductive coupling. Here, we present a method of designing a coil based on optimizing for a particular B1 field profile that may offer advantages for SENSE imaging. The method is essentially a target field method common in gradient coil design applied to rf coils. [6]