A Chip-based Miniature MRI Platform with Integrated PDMS-PCB Coil Frontend for Microlitre-volume Sample Analysis

This paper presents a miniature magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) platform specifically designed for imaging small-volume samples (~1μL), making it particularly suitable for real-time and on-site biochemical sample monitoring. This innovative system employs an MRI application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) for excitation and detecting the nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) signal. To cope with the small-volume sensing, the platform features a customized frontend probe, which includes a miniaturized saddle coil and a PDMS-molded sample well to contain the microlitre-volume sample under observation. Our proof-of-concept measurements on small-volume samples demonstrate an MRI image resolution of 150 × 150 × 250μm<sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">3</sup>. These results highlight the system’s applicability and potential for future biological analysis, offering a promising tool for researchers in the field.