Refine
Year of publication
Institute
- Fachbereich Elektrotechnik und Informationstechnik (414) (remove)
Language
- English (414) (remove)
Document Type
- Article (414) (remove)
Keywords
- Hot S-parameter (2)
- MINLP (2)
- 197m/gHg (1)
- 3-D printing (1)
- Automated driving (1)
- Automotive application (1)
- Benchmark (1)
- Bloom’s Taxonomy (1)
- Booster Stations (1)
- Buffering Capacity (1)
Cheap does not imply cost-effective -- this is rule number one of zeitgeisty system design. The initial investment accounts only for a small portion of the lifecycle costs of a technical system. In fluid systems, about ninety percent of the total costs are caused by other factors like power consumption and maintenance. With modern optimization methods, it is already possible to plan an optimal technical system considering multiple objectives. In this paper, we focus on an often neglected contribution to the lifecycle costs: downtime costs due to spontaneous failures. Consequently, availability becomes an issue.
Purpose
To design and evaluate a modular transceiver coil array with 32 independent channels for cardiac MRI at 7.0T.
Methods
The modular coil array comprises eight independent building blocks, each containing four transceiver loop elements. Numerical simulations were used for B1+ field homogenization and radiofrequency (RF) safety validation. RF characteristics were examined in a phantom study. The array's suitability for accelerated high spatial resolution two-dimensional (2D) FLASH CINE imaging of the heart was examined in a volunteer study.
Results
Transmission field adjustments and RF characteristics were found to be suitable for the volunteer study. The signal-to-noise intrinsic to 7.0T together with the coil performance afforded a spatial resolution of 1.1 × 1.1 × 2.5 mm3 for 2D CINE FLASH MRI, which is by a factor of 6 superior to standardized CINE protocols used in clinical practice at 1.5T. The 32-channel transceiver array supports one-dimensional acceleration factors of up to R = 4 without impairing image quality significantly.
Conclusion
The modular 32-channel transceiver cardiac array supports accelerated and high spatial resolution cardiac MRI. The array is compatible with multichannel transmission and provides a technological basis for future clinical assessment of parallel transmission techniques at 7.0T.
Chain scattering parameters or T-parameters are a useful tool for calculating cascaded two-ports. With the increasing importance of mixed-mode S-parameters, a need for converting the T-parameters from their unbalanced form into a balanced form emerges for suiting both common and differential mode waves, as well as the mode conversion. This paper presents the derivation of the equations for transformations between mixed-mode S- and T-parameters for a mixed-mode two-port. Although derived in a way very similar to monomode T-parameters, no simplifications were necessary. Measurement results exemplify the quality of the T-parameter transformation under real-life conditions.