Title: Small animal whole body imaging with metamaterial-inspired RF coil,
Abstract: Preclinical magnetic resonance imaging often requires the entire body of an
animal to be imaged with sufficient quality. This is usually performed by
combining regions scanned with small coils with high sensitivity or long scans
using large coils with low sensitivity. Here, a metamaterial-inspired design
employing of a parallel array of wires operating on the principle of eigenmode
hybridization is used to produce a small animal whole-body imaging coil. The
coil field distribution responsible for the coil field of view and sensitivity
is simulated in an electromagnetic simulation package and the coil geometrical
parameters are optimized for the chosen application. A prototype coil is then
manufactured and assembled using brass telescopic tubes and copper plates as
distributed capacitance, its field distribution is measured experimentally
using B1+ mapping technique and found to be in close correspondence with
simulated results. The coil field distribution is found to be suitable for
whole-body small animal imaging and coil image quality is compared with a
number of commercially available coils by whole-body living mice scanning.
Signal to noise measurements in living mice show outstanding coil performance
compared to commercially available coils with large receptive fields, and
rivaling performance compared to small receptive field and high-sensitivity
coils. The coil is deemed suitable for whole-body small animal preclinical
applications.