Burn depth assessment in clinics is still inaccurate because of the lack of feasible and practical testing devices and methods. Therefore, this process often depends on subjective judgment of burn surgeons. In this study, a new unilateral magnetic resonance imaging (UMRI) sensor equipped with a 2D gradient coil system was established, and we attempted to assess burns using unilateral nuclear magnetic resonance devices. A reduced Halbach magnet was utilized to generate a magnetic field that was relatively homogeneous on a target plane with a suitable field of view for 2D spatial localization. A uniplanar gradient coil system was designed by utilizing the mainstream target field method, and a uniplanar RF (radio frequency) coil was designed by using a timeharmonic inverse method for the UMRI sensor. A 2D image of the cross sections of a simple burn model was obtained by a fast 2D pure-phase encoding imaging method. The design details of the novel single-sided MRI probe and imaging tests are also presented.
Keywords: burn depth assessment; planar gradient coil; unilateral magnetic resonance imaging (UMRI).