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Accelerating the co-simulation method for the design of transmit array coils for MRI

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Abstract

Objective

Accelerating the co-simulation method for the design of transmit array (TxArray) coils is studied using equivalent circuit models.

Materials and methods

Although the co-simulation method dramatically reduces the complexity of the design of TxArray coils, finding the optimum solution is not trivial since there exist many local minima in the optimization problem. We propose to utilize an equivalent circuit model of the TxArray coil to obtain a proper initial guess for the optimization process of the co-simulation method. To prove the concept, six different TxArray coils (i.e., three degenerate birdcage coils (DBC), two dual-row head coils, and one elliptical body TxArray coil) with two different loading strategies (cylindrical phantom and human head/body model) at 3 T field strength are investigated theoretically; as an example study, an eight-channel head-DBC is constructed using the obtained values.

Results

This approach accelerates the design process more than 20-fold for the coils that are investigated in this manuscript.

Conclusion

A fast and accurate method for tuning and decoupling of a TxArray coil can be achieved using its equivalent circuit model combined with the co-simulation method.

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taken from a uniform phantom using the DBC. The sequence parameters are TR = 100 ms, TE = 12 ms, NEX = 1, 128 × 128, FOV = 20 cm, and slice thickness = 5 mm. d, e The standard deviation of B1+ on readout and phase encoding axes corresponding to both BC and DBC. Calculated mean standard deviations (in percentage) verify a good performance of the DBC

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Acknowledgements

This project was supported by ASELSAN A.S. Ankara, Turkey. MREPT experiments were performed by the aid of Mr. Safa Ozdemir using the facilities of UMRAM, Bilkent University, Ankara, Turkey.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Bilkent University, 06800, Ankara, Turkey

    Alireza Sadeghi-Tarakameh, Ehsan Kazemivalipour, Serhat Erdogan & Ergin Atalar

  2. National Magnetic Resonance Research Center (UMRAM), 06800, Ankara, Turkey

    Alireza Sadeghi-Tarakameh, Ehsan Kazemivalipour, Umut Gundogdu & Ergin Atalar

Authors
  1. Alireza Sadeghi-Tarakameh
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  2. Ehsan Kazemivalipour
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  3. Umut Gundogdu
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  4. Serhat Erdogan
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  5. Ergin Atalar
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Contributions

AST: responsible for study conception and design, acquisition of data, analysis and interpretation of data, and drafting of manuscript. EK: involved in study conception and design. UG: advised and developed methods for the acquisition of data. SE: advised and developed methods to analyze the data. EA: responsible for study conception and design, analysis and interpretation of data, drafting of the manuscript, and critical revision of the manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Ergin Atalar.

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The authors declare that they have received a research grant from ASELSAN.

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Sadeghi-Tarakameh, A., Kazemivalipour, E., Gundogdu, U. et al. Accelerating the co-simulation method for the design of transmit array coils for MRI. Magn Reson Mater Phy 34, 165–178 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10334-020-00858-0

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