Fabrication of a Staircase Coil with Improved SNR and Image Uniformity by Structural Changes of a Conventional Birdcage Coil at 1.5T MRI

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.