Tales Santini1, Anthony DeFranco1, Tiago Martins1, Andrea Sajewski1, Howard J. Aizenstein1, and Tamer S. Ibrahim1
1University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, United States
1University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, United States
We presented the uncoupled 28-channel transmit Tic-Tac-Toe
coil design, which delivers high levels of B1+
homogeneity while maintaining low SAR characteristic of the design. The
simulations were validated experimentally in a spherical phantom.
The 28-channel Tic-Tac-Toe (TTT) RF transmit coil design. In
a), the full model with 14 TTT panels shown with the Duke head model; in b),
the coupled configuration of the TTT, with 4 channels per panel; in c), the
uncoupled configuration, with 2 channels per panel; in d) the assembled TTT
panel used in the experimental validation
RF shimming with the 28-channel uncoupled TTT configuration
(14 panels, as shown in Figure 1a); in a), several axial slices from below the brain
stem to the top of the head and mid-sagittal and coronal slices. The
simulations show homogeneous whole-brain coverage. In b), the maximum intensity
projection of the SAR in axial, coronal, and sagittal planes respectively; in
c), summary of the statistics. These are high values of homogeneity and SAR efficiency
at 7T