A Detachable and Rotatable 14-Channel Coil Array for Human Brain Intraoperative/Interventional MRI at 3 T

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is an essential tool for guiding and supervising intraoperative and interventional therapies due to its excellent soft tissue discrimination and multiplanar and 3-D volume imaging capabilities. The predominant utilization of flexible surface radio frequency (RF) coils, though prevalent, is accompanied by certain limitations such as suboptimal decoupling between coil elements, instability in fixation, and nonuniform image intensity and tissue contrast. Furthermore, these coils are constrained in their ability to perform parallel accelerated imaging due to their limited number of channels. To address these issues, we designed and devised a 14-channel coil array, which is housed on a detachable, rotatable, and cylinder-like holder, for use in human brain imaging at 3 T. To accommodate interventional devices, we constructed ten openings in the housing, and the coil can be rotated clockwise/counterclockwise by up to 15° along the head–foot axis. In addition, the coil can be split into two parts: the top six and bottom eight channels, and each part can be operated independently for imaging. Through experiments on a human head phantom and a human subject, we found that the 14-channel coil performed comparably to a commercial 20-channel head/neck coil in signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) distribution, accelerated parallel imaging ability, as well as uniformity and tissue contrast in gray-white matter. Coil quality assessment also showed negligible differences between rotation and nonrotation. The proposed coil array holds potential for deployment in intraoperative/interventional MRI applications, facilitating lesion localization, surgical and therapeutic guidance, as well as prognosis monitoring.