Improvement of SNR in MRgFUS with strategic design of bath medium and transducer ground plane

MR-guided Focused Ultrasound (MRgFUS) of the head at 3 Tesla suffers from low image Signal-to-Noise ration in exactly the region of interest in the brain due to severe dielectric effects from the water bolus surrounding the head to facilitate cooling of the scalp and transmission of ultrasonic energy. We show that by changing the medium of the bath and adding slots to the ground plane it is possible to go from low SNR to high SNR I the region of interest.