Improved image quality with a receive-only coil for the Bruker MPI scanner

Sensitivity and resolution in MPI depend, amongst others, on the used scanner hardware and the iron concentration in the measured sample. Typically, to reconstruct samples with low iron amount, in the system matrix (SM) based reconstruction, only low frequency components with high signal-to-noise ratio are used, which limits the achievable spatial resolution. Here, Bruker’s preclinical MPI scanner is used to compare the image quality of samples at decreasing iron concentrations measured with either the built-in transmit-receive (TxRx) coil or a dedicated smaller receive-only (Rx) coil. The results show that the Rx coil allows visualization of significantly lower iron concentrations. Additionally, the image quality of measurements with the TxRx coil can be enhanced by using the SM of the Rx coil for reconstruction, which is beneficial for objects that do not fit into the Rx coil.