Design of an Open-transmit / 24-channel flexible receiver head coil for MRI/fMRI of somatosensory and motor cortex at 5T

Motivation: Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is a non-invasive in vivo functional mapping technique, which afforded a high-quality glimpse of the cortex. Goal(s): Sampling brain activity across cortical layers by using proposed RF coilApproach: The Open-Face birdcage coil was designed by removing and adjusting the legs of the 16-rung high-pass birdcage coil. The 24ch flexible receive array was designed for high spatiotemporal-resolution MRI/fMRI at cortical region. Results: In this study, we designed and constructed an open-transmit and 24 channel flexible receiver head coil assembly for human somatosensory and motor cortex in vivo cortical imaging on a whole body 5T scanner. Impact: SNR maps, T2* weighted images and fMRI images were acquired with the proposed coil assembly, which were compared with those using a quadrature birdcage transmit/48-channel receiver coil assembly.