System and method for receiver coil placement guidance for intraoperative mri

A coil placement system for an intraoperative MRI, the system comprising:

• a receiver coil;
• an identification marker attached to the receiver coil;
• a detection system for locating the identification marker;
• a computing device communicating with the detection system, for calculating:
• a coil position from a location of the identification marker;
• a coil geometry relative to a patient and an MRI magnetic field;
• and
• an SNR map from the coil geometry;
• and
• a display for presenting an image of the SNR map superimposed onto a surgical navigation image;
• wherein the computing device updates the SNR map on the display in real-time as the receiver coil is placed.