Transmit and receive transmission line arrays for 7 Tesla parallel imaging

Transceive array coils, capable of RF transmission and independent signal reception, were developed for parallel, 1H imaging applications in the human head at 7 T (300 MHz). The coils combine the advantages of high-frequency properties of transmission lines with classic MR coil design. Because of the short wavelength at the 1H frequency at 300 MHz, these coils were straightforward to build and decouple. The sensitivity profiles of individual coils were highly asymmetric, as expected at this high frequency; however, the summed images from all coils were relatively uniform over the whole brain. Data were obtained with four- and eight-channel transceive arrays built using a loop configuration and compared to arrays built from straight stripline transmission lines. With both the four- and the eight-channel arrays, parallel imaging with sensitivity encoding with high reduction numbers was feasible at 7 T in the human head. A one-dimensional reduction factor of 4 was robustly achieved with an average g value of 1.25 with the eight-channel transmit/receive coils.