Ewald Weber

GPU-Accelerated FDTD Modeling of Radio-Frequency Field–Tissue Interactions in High-Field MRI

The analysis of high-field RF field-tissue interactions requires high-performance finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) computing. Conventional CPU-based FDTD calculations offer limited computing performance in a PC environment. This study presents a graphics processing unit (GPU)-based parallel-computing framework, producing substantially boosted computing efficiency (with a two-order speedup factor) at a PC-level cost. Specific details of implementing the FDTD method on a GPU architecture have been presented and the new computational strategy has been successfully applied to the design of a novel 8-element transceive RF coil system at 9.4 T. Facilitated by the powerful GPU-FDTD computing, the new RF coil array offers optimized fields (averaging 25% improvement in sensitivity, and 20% reduction in loop coupling compared with conventional array structures of the same size) for small animal imaging with a robust RF configuration. The GPU-enabled acceleration paves the way for FDTD to be applied for both detailed forward modeling and inverse design of MRI coils, which were previously impractical.

Passive Shim Design and a Shimming Approach for Biplanar Permanent Magnetic Resonance Imaging Magnets

This paper presents a new passive shim design method and a novel shimming procedure to correct the magnetic field inhomogeneities generated by C-shape permanent biplanar magnetic resonance imaging magnets. The method expresses the shim distribution as a sum of orthogonal functions multiplied by unknown amplitudes. The oscillating modes of the shim magnetization-thickness function are normalized within a finite disk. By minimizing the shim set weight and constraining the magnetization-thickness function, the method produces a continuous map of the required shim contribution. The map defines the shim shape and a discrete process then determines the regions where no shim contributions are needed. With this methodology, passive shims capable of generating magnetic field harmonics with minimal impurities and ferro-shim pieces can be generated. The paper reports a study of magnetic coupling among the iron pieces and its influence over the magnetic field harmonics of linear and nonlinear iron, and demonstrates that the exclusion of the magnetic coupling in the shimming process produces an unacceptable error in the final shimmed field homogeneity. The proper selection and arrangement of individual shim sizes produces a better conditioned field source matrix and hence improves the design. A number of examples show that the new method can effectively cancel target impurity harmonics while controlling high-order harmonics.

Hybrid numerical techniques for the modelling of radiofrequency coils in MRI.

Radiofrequency (RF) coils for use in MRI can have a significant effect on both the signal‐to‐noise‐ratio of MR images and the specific absorption rate inside the biological sample. In the past, prototypes were constructed and tested to investigate the performance of the RF coils and often required several iterations to achieve an acceptable result. However, with the advancement in computational electromagnetic techniques, RF coil modelling has now become the modus operandi of coil design because it can produce accurate numerical results, thus reducing the time and effort spent in designing and prototyping RF coils. Two hybrid methods –method of moments (MoM)/finite difference time domain (FDTD) and MoM/finite element method (FEM) – for RF coil modelling are presented herein. The paper provides a brief overview of FDTD, FEM and MoM. It discusses the hybridisation of these methods and how they are integrated to form versatile techniques. The numerical results obtained from these hybrid methods are compared with experimental results from prototype coils over a range of operating frequencies. The methods are then applied to the design of a new type of phased‐array coil – the rotary phased array. From these comparisons, it can be seen that the numerical methods provide a useful aid for the design and optimisation of RF coils for use in MRI. Copyright

An electromagnetic reverse method of coil sensitivity mapping for parallel MRI – Theoretical framework

In this paper, a novel sensitivity mapping method is proposed for the image domain parallel MRI (pMRI) technique. Instead of refining raw sensitivity maps by means of conventional image processing operations such as polynomial fitting, the presented method determines coil sensitivity profiles through an iterative optimization process. During the algorithm implementation the optimization cost function is defined as the difference between the raw sensitivity profile and the desired profile. The minimization is governed by the physics of low-frequency electromagnetic and reciprocity theories. The performance of the method was theoretically investigated and compared with that of a traditional polynomial fitting, against a range of system noise levels. It was found that, the new method produces high-fidelity sensitivity profiles with noise amplitudes, measured as root mean square deviation an order of magnitude less than that of the polynomial fitting method. Using the sensitivity profiles generated by our method, SENSE (sensitivity encoding) reconstructions produce significantly less image artefacts than conventional methods. The successful implementation of this method has far-reaching implications that accurate sensitivity mapping is not only important for parallel reconstruction, but also essential for its transmission analogy, such as Transmit SENSE.

Three-Dimensional Gradient Coil Structures for Magnetic Resonance Imaging Designed Using Fuzzy Membership Functions

The design of high-performance gradient coils is essential for modern magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) applications. This work presents a new and alternative design methodology that explores three-dimensional (3-D) solution space by combining fuzzy membership functions to model and reshape the coil structure, given the magnetic field and electrical and mechanical constraints. The approach includes a stream function generator, a 3-D coil structure generator, and the evaluation of an objective function. An unconventional stream function for asymmetric transverse gradient coils is defined in terms of fuzzy sets. The method was applied to design a short, unshielded asymmetric gradient coil for breast imaging. The resulting dome-shape coil has superior gradient performance compared to a standard fingerprint coil. New quadrupolar gradient coil designs for breast imaging can also be obtained with the proposed method. The paper concludes with a study of the influence of a number of design parameters on the coil performance.

Image reconstructions with the rotating RF coil

Recent studies have shown that rotating a single RF transceive coil (RRFC) provides a uniform coverage of the object and brings a number of hardware advantages (i.e. requires only one RF channel, averts coil-coil coupling interactions and facilitates large-scale multi-nuclear imaging). Motion of the RF coil sensitivity profile however violates the standard Fourier Transform definition of a time-invariant signal, and the images reconstructed in this conventional manner can be degraded by ghosting artifacts. To overcome this problem, this paper presents Time Division Multiplexed-Sensitivity Encoding (TDM-SENSE), as a new image reconstruction scheme that exploits the rotation of the RF coil sensitivity profile to facilitate ghost-free image reconstructions and reductions in image acquisition time. A transceive RRFC system for head imaging at 2 Tesla was constructed and applied in a number of in vivo experiments. In this initial study, alias-free head images were obtained in half the usual scan time. It is hoped that new sequences and methods will be developed by taking advantage of coil motion.

Inverse field-based approach for simultaneous B1 mapping at high fields – A phantom based study

Based on computational electromagnetics and multi-level optimization, an inverse approach of attaining accurate mapping of both transmit and receive sensitivity of radiofrequency coils is presented. This paper extends our previous study of inverse methods of receptivity mapping at low fields, to allow accurate mapping of RF magnetic fields (B(1)) for high-field applications. Accurate receive sensitivity mapping is essential to image domain parallel imaging methods, such as sensitivity encoding (SENSE), to reconstruct high quality images. Accurate transmit sensitivity mapping will facilitate RF-shimming and parallel transmission techniques that directly address the RF inhomogeneity issue, arguably the most challenging issue of high-field magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). The inverse field-based approach proposed herein is based on computational electromagnetics and iterative optimization. It fits an experimental image to the numerically calculated signal intensity by iteratively optimizing the coil-subject geometry to better resemble the experiments. Accurate transmit and receive sensitivities are derived as intermediate results of the optimization process. The method is validated by imaging studies using homogeneous saline phantom at 7T. A simulation study at 300MHz demonstrates that the proposed method is able to obtain receptivity mapping with errors an order of magnitude less than that of the conventional method. The more accurate receptivity mapping and simultaneously obtained transmit sensitivity mapping could enable artefact-reduced and intensity-corrected image reconstructions. It is hoped that by providing an approach to the accurate mapping of both transmit and receive sensitivity, the proposed method will facilitate a range of applications in high-field MRI and parallel imaging.

Pseudo-Polar Fourier Transform-Based Compressed Sensing MRI

The use of radial k-space trajectories has drawn strong interest from researchers for their potential in developing fast imaging methods in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Compared with conventional Cartesian trajectories, radial sampling collects more data from the central k-space region and the radially sampled data are more incoherent. These properties are very suitable for compressed sensing (CS)-based fast imaging. When reconstructing under-sampled radial data with CS, regridding and inverse-regridding are needed to transfer data between the image and frequency domains. In each CS iteration, two-dimensional interpolations are implemented twice in the regridding and inverse-regridding, introducing errors and undermining reconstruction quality. To overcome these problems, a radial-like pseudo-polar (PP) trajectory is proposed for the CS MRI applications. The PP trajectory preserves all the essential features of radial trajectory and allows an image reconstruction with PP fast Fourier transform (PPFFT) instead of interpolations. This paper attempts to investigate the performance of PP trajectory-based CS-MRI. In CS-based image reconstruction, the transformation of PP-sampled k-space data into the image domain is realized through PPFFT, which is based on the standard one-dimensional FFT and the fractional Fourier transform. To evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed methods, both numerical and experimental data are used to compare the new methods with conventional approaches. The proposed method provided high-quality reconstruction of the MR images with over 2-dB gain in peak signal-to-noise ratio while keeping structural similarity over 0.88 in different situations. Compared with the conventional radial sampling-based CS MRI methods, the proposed method achieves a more accurate reconstruction with respect to image detail/edge preservation and artifact suppression. The successful implementation of the PP subsampling-based CS scheme provides a practical and accurate CS-based rapid imaging method for clinical applications.

Rotational magnetic induction tomography

In magnetic induction tomography (MIT), an array of excitation coils is typically used to apply time-varying magnetic fields to induce eddy currents in the material to be studied. The magnetic fields from the eddy currents are then detected by an array of sensing coils to form an image of passive electromagnetic properties (i.e. conductivity, permittivity and permeability). Increasing the number of transmitters and receivers can provide a better image quality at the expense of a larger and more expensive MIT system. Instead of increasing the number of coils, this study investigates the possibility of rotating a single transmit–receive coil to image the electrical properties of the sample, by emulating an array of 200 transmit–receive coils by time-division multiplexing. Engineering details on the electromechanical design and development of a rotating MIT system are presented. The experimental results indicate that representative images of conductive samples can be obtained at 5 MHz by rotating a single transmit–receive coil.

A ultra high field multi-element transceive volume array for small animal MRI

In this work, a dedicated, 9.4T shielded 8-element transceive volume-array for large rat MRI applications is designed and the prototype constructed. Angularly oriented radiating structured coil elements are used. It is shown that by orienting the radiating conductors of the coil element angularly, the RF penetration depth can be increased and the mutual coupling effect can be regulated to minimum. In addition, experimental results show that the prototype can produce homogenous B1 field and is well suited for the Transmit SENSE application and the GRAPPA parallel imaging technique.