Design and manufacture of an ultra-compact, 1.5 T class, controlled-contact resistance, REBCO, brain imaging MRI magnet

Brain imaging MRI comprises a significant proportion of MRI scans, but the requirement for including the shoulders in the magnet bore means there is not a significant size reduction in the magnet compared to whole-body magnets. Here we present a new design approach for brain imaging MRI magnets targeting ±20 kHz <i>B</i> ₀ variation over the imaging volume rather than the more usual ±200 Hz making use of novel high-bandwidth MRI pulse sequences and distortion correction. Using this design approach, we designed and manufactured a 1.5 T class ReBCO cryogen-free magnet. The magnet is dome-like in form, completely excludes the shoulders and is <400 mm long. The magnet was wound using no-insulation style coils with a conductive epoxy encapsulant where the contact resistance of the coils was controlled so the emergency shut-down time of the magnet was less than 30 s. Despite acceptable coil testing results ahead of manufacture, during testing of the magnet, several of the epoxy coils showed signs of damage limiting stable performance to <55 A compared to the designed 160 A. These coils were replaced with insulated paraffin encapsulated coils. Subsequently the magnet was re-ramped and was stable at 81 A, generating 0.71 T as several other coils had sustained damage not visible in the first magnet iteration. The magnet has been passive shimmed to ±20 kHz <i>B</i> ₀ variation over the imaging volume and integrated into an MRI scanner. The stability of the magnet has been evaluated and found to be acceptable for MRI.