Automatic three-dimensional approach method for rf coil assessment in clinical mri

A computer system comprising a program for determining the performance of one or more receiver coils of an MRI machine, or of a hybrid-MRI machine, the computer system comprising a processor and a memory encoding one or more programs coupled to the processor, wherein the processor effects the one or more programs to perform a method of determining the performance of one or more receiver coils of a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machine or a hybrid-MRI machine comprising a plurality of radiofrequency receiver coils, the method comprising:

• scanning a 3D phantom, which phantom is substantially uniform, in the MRI machine or in the hybrid-MRI machine;
• obtaining an individual 3D image of the phantom for each individual receiver coil of the plurality of receiver coils, and also constructing a composite 3D image of the phantom from the composite of the signals received by the plurality of receiver coils, so as to produce n+1 3D images, where n=the number of coils in the plurality of receiver coils;
• determining a measurement volume from the composite 3D image;
• obtaining a 3D region of interest measurement volume (ROImv) from the measurement volume of the composite 3D image;
• determining, for each of the n+1 3D images, (i) the maximum mean signal intensity within the 3D image measurement volume (ROImax), and (ii) the minimum mean signal intensity within the 3D image measurement volume (ROImin), and determining (iii) a location of a signal void region from where standard deviation can be measured (ROInoise) from the composite 3D image;
• determining, for each of the n+1 3D images, the signal to noise ratio of the measurement volume (SNRmv) and/or the maximum signal to noise ratio (SNRmax) signal to noise ratio for each 3D image and/or the percent image uniformity (PIU) of each 3D image and determining the ROInoise;
• and
• comparing the SNRmv and/or SNRmax and/or the PIU of each 3D image to a reference SNRmv value, reference SNRmax value, and reference PIU value, respectively, so as to determine the performance of the one or more receiver coils,
• wherein a SNRmv and/or SNRmax and/or the PIU less than the reference value of SNRmv, SNRmax and/or PIU, respectively, is considered unacceptable performance.