Towards Ultra-Low RF Power Simultaneous Transmit and Receive (STAR) MRI with a Wearable RF Transceiver Head Coil

Simultaneous transmit and receive (STAR) is an emerging MRI technology that enables the continuous SWIFT pulse sequence to be used for imaging short T2 tissues. By joining this technology with wearable RF coils, a wide range of pediatric patients could be accommodated for while using low RF power. First, a standalone STAR system was built to isolate two transceiver coils. Then, the system was interfaced with a wireless user-board for fine-tuning the output isolation state after STAR had automatically calibrated a high isolation state. The coils consisted of liquid eutectic Gallium Indium in plastic tubes on a fabric sleeve, thus they could be stretched and bent. A pineapple was imaged in a 1.5T MRI scanner using only 1 mW of RF peak power. The image shows the ability of wearable coils to conform to an arbitrary shape, thus allowing the B1 field to penetrate deeply into a subject.