Saniour Isabelle, Robb Fraser J L, Taracila Victor, Mishra Vishwas, Vincent Jana, Voss Henning U, Kaplitt Michael G, Chazen J Levi, Winkler Simone Angela
Department of Radiology, Weill Cornell Medicine, NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, New York, NY 10065, USA.
MR Engineering, GE Healthcare Coils, Aurora, OH 44202, USA.
IEEE Access. 2022;10:25062-25072. doi: 10.1109/access.2022.3154824. Epub 2022 Feb 25.
Magnetic resonance guided focused ultrasound (MRgFUS) is a non-invasive therapeutic modality for neurodegenerative diseases that employs real-time imaging and thermometry monitoring of targeted regions. MRI is used in guidance of ultrasound treatment; however, the MR image quality in current clinical applications is poor when using the vendor built-in body coil. We present an 8-channel, ultra-thin, flexible, and acoustically transparent receive-only head coil design (FUS-Flex) to improve the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and thus the quality of MR images during MRgFUS procedures. Acoustic simulations/experiments exhibit transparency of the FUS-Flex coil as high as 97% at 650 kHz. Electromagnetic simulations show a SNR increase of 13× over the body coil. In vivo results show an increase of the SNR over the body coil by a factor of 7.3 with 2× acceleration (equivalent to 11× without acceleration) in the brain of a healthy volunteer, which agrees well with simulation. These preliminary results show that the use of a FUS-Flex coil in MRgFUS surgery can increase MR image quality, which could yield improved focal precision, real-time intraprocedural anatomical imaging, and real-time 3D thermometry mapping.
磁共振引导聚焦超声（MRgFUS）是一种用于神经退行性疾病的非侵入性治疗方式，它采用对目标区域的实时成像和温度监测。MRI用于超声治疗的引导；然而，在当前临床应用中，使用供应商内置的体线圈时，MR图像质量较差。我们提出了一种8通道、超薄、灵活且声学透明的仅接收式头部线圈设计（FUS-Flex），以提高信噪比（SNR），从而提高MRgFUS手术过程中MR图像的质量。声学模拟/实验表明，FUS-Flex线圈在650kHz时的透明度高达97%。电磁模拟显示，与体线圈相比，SNR提高了13倍。体内结果显示，在一名健康志愿者的大脑中，使用2倍加速（相当于不加速时的11倍）时，与体线圈相比，SNR提高了7.3倍，这与模拟结果非常吻合。这些初步结果表明，在MRgFUS手术中使用FUS-Flex线圈可以提高MR图像质量，这可能会提高聚焦精度、实时术中解剖成像以及实时三维温度测量映射。
