Even-odd mode excitation for stability investigation of Cartesian feedback amplifier used in parallel transmit array.

A 7 Tesla Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) system with parallel transmission (pTx) for 32 near-magnet Cartesian feedback loop power amplifiers (PA) with output power of 1kW is under construction at Erwin L. Hahn Institute for Magnetic Resonance Imaging. Variation of load impedance due to mutual coupling of neighborhood coils in the array may lead to instability of the Cartesian feedback loop amplifier. MRI safety requires unconditional stability of the PAs at any load. In order to avoid instability in the pTx system, conditions and limits of stability have to be investigated for every possible excitation mode for the coil array. In this work, an efficient method of stability check for an array of two transmit channels (Tx) with Cartesian feedback loop amplifier and a selective excitation mode for the coil array is proposed which allows extension of stability investigations to a large pTx array with any arbitrary excitation mode for the coil array.