Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of California Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA.
Sci Rep. 2021 Jan 29;11(1):2635. doi: 10.1038/s41598-021-81833-0.
We have developed a process for fabricating patient specific Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) Radio-frequency (RF) receive coil arrays using additive manufacturing. Our process involves spray deposition of silver nanoparticle inks and dielectric materials onto 3D printed substrates to form high-quality resonant circuits. In this paper, we describe the material selection and characterization, process optimization, and design and testing of a prototype 4-channel neck array for carotid imaging. We show that sprayed polystyrene can form a low loss dielectric layer in a parallel plate capacitor. We also demonstrate that by using sprayed silver nanoparticle ink as conductive traces, our devices are still dominated by sample noise, rather than material losses. These results are critical for maintaining high Signal-to-Noise-Ratio (SNR) in clinical settings. Finally, our prototype patient specific coil array exhibits higher SNR (5 × in the periphery, 1.4 × in the center) than a commercially available array designed to fit the majority of subjects when tested on our custom neck phantom. 3D printed substrates ensure an optimum fit to complex body parts, improve diagnostic image quality, and enable reproducible placement on subjects.
我们开发了一种使用增材制造技术制造患者特定磁共振成像（MRI）射频（RF）接收线圈阵列的方法。我们的方法包括将银纳米粒子油墨和介电材料喷涂到 3D 打印基底上，以形成高质量的共振电路。在本文中，我们描述了材料选择和特性、工艺优化、以及用于颈动脉成像的原型 4 通道颈部阵列的设计和测试。我们表明，喷涂聚苯乙烯可以在平行板电容器中形成低损耗介电层。我们还证明，通过使用喷涂银纳米粒子油墨作为导电迹线，我们的器件仍然主要受样品噪声的影响，而不是材料损耗。这些结果对于在临床环境中保持高信噪比（SNR）至关重要。最后，我们的原型患者特定线圈阵列在我们的定制颈部体模上进行测试时，与为适应大多数受试者而设计的商用阵列相比，在边缘处表现出更高的 SNR（5 倍），在中心处表现出更高的 SNR（1.4 倍）。3D 打印基底确保与复杂的身体部位实现最佳贴合，提高诊断图像质量，并能够在受试者上进行可重复的定位。
