Multi-channel receive coil array for human head MPI system

Abstract

Magnetic particle imaging is an emerging medical tomographic technique that employs a combination of static and alternating magnetic fields to spatially encode superparamagnetic nanoparticle-based tracers injected into a patient’s bloodstream. Unlike the widely used magnetic resonance imaging, in MPI, the signal excitation and reception processes occur simultaneously, which imposes limitations on the architecture of the receive coils used in the equipment. This work presents a novel matrix receive coil concept featuring significant gradiometric characteristics, enabling the construction of a multi-channel array for a human head MPI system. The feasibility of this concept is demonstrated through numerical simulations on two coil arrays with different numbers of elements. These results show that the presented approach can serve as an efficient way to expand the number of independent receive channels, efficiently increasing the available field of view and sensitivity of the imaging system.