ANTENNA DESIGN IMPROVES SMALL-SAMPLE MRI

CARDIOVASCULAR disease is a leading cause of death in the US. A domina nt disease mechanism is the buildup of atherosclerotic plaque in the c arotid artery at the junction in the neck where the artery branches in to two segments. Currently, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is being used experimentally to study plaque samples that have been surgically removed from the carotid artery.(1) However, conventional whole body i maging systems suffer from low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), which resu lts in poor image quality when applied to physically small samples suc h as plaque. A custom transmit/receive antenna coil (or excitation coi l) increases the SNR and improves image quality for small samples.