On the Bending and Stretching of Liquid Metal Receive Coils for Magnetic Resonance Imaging

IEEE Trans Biomed Eng. 2019 Jun;66(6):1542-1548. doi: 10.1109/TBME.2018.2875436. Epub 2018 Oct 11.

Abstract

The eGaIn coil on neoprene demonstrated in this paper presents a stretchable radio frequency receive coil for magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). The coil with dimensions [Formula: see text] is tuned to resonate at 128 MHz for 3 T MRI. We investigate the effect of stretching (up to 40% strain) and bending (50 mm radius of curvature) of the coil on the coil's resistance and resonance frequency. Measurements and simulations show a decrease in resonance frequency of 2.5 MHz per 10% strain. The higher resistivity of liquid metal compared to copper reduces the SNR of MRI scans by 34%; therefore, a tradeoff between flexibility and performance remains. Nevertheless, we have successfully performed MRI scans with the liquid metal coil.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Computer Simulation
  • Equipment Design
  • Magnetic Resonance Imaging / instrumentation*
  • Metals, Heavy / chemistry*
  • Neoprene / chemistry
  • Phantoms, Imaging
  • Pliability
  • Signal-To-Noise Ratio

Substances

  • Metals, Heavy
  • Neoprene