RF coil for imaging system
AssigneeThe General Hospital Corporation
InventorJ. Thomas Vaughan, Jr.
Life of this patent
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Abstract
An RF coil suitable for use in imaging systems is provided which coil has a dielectric filled cavity formed by a surrounding conducting enclosure, the conducting enclosure preferably being patterned to form continuous electrical paths around the cavity, each of which paths may be tuned to a selected resonant frequency. The patterning breaks up any currents induced in the coil and shortens path lengths to permit higher frequency, and thus higher field strength operation. The invention also includes improved mechanisms for tuning the resonant frequency of the paths, for selectively detuning the paths, for applying signal to the coil, for shortening the length of the coil and for controlling the field profile of the coil and the delivery of field to the object to the image.
Claims72
An RF coil for use in an imaging system including a cavity formed as a conductive enclosure in which resonant fields can be excited, said conductive enclosure including an electrical conductor patterned to form a plurality of separate RF conductive paths around the cavity.
An RF coil for use in an imaging system including:
- a cavity formed as a conductive enclosure in which resonant fields can be excited, said conductive enclosure having N separate continuous RF electrical paths, each of which path has a resonant frequency;
- and
- a circuit which applies RF drive signal to and/or receives RF signals from M selectively spaced ones of said paths, where M is an integer and 1≦M≦N.
An RF coil for use in an imaging system, which coil is used to at least one of transmit and receive RF signals, but not both simultaneously, including:
- a cavity formed as a conductive enclosure in which resonant fields can be excited, said conductive enclosure having N separate continuous electrical paths, each of which path has a resonant frequency;
- and
- a detuning mechanism for said paths, said detuning mechanism being operative when said RF coil is not in the one of the transmit/receive mode for which it is being used.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.