Coaxial waveguide for travelling wave MRI at ultrahigh fields

At high magnetic fields the performance of a volume-type body coil inside a human sized MR-scanner is influenced by the waveguide action of the scanner's bore. This can result in undesirable strong radio frequency fields B1+) outside the coil's target volume. A radio frequency (RF) transmit system, exploiting this waveguide action of the bore, is proposed in this work. A coaxial waveguide section is introduced between the antenna and the imaging region. It is shown that the coaxial waveguide has several advantages over the initially proposed travelling wave setup based on the cylindrical waveguide. First, a novel radio frequency matching principle (based on the transmission line impedance matching) is feasible with the coaxial waveguide achieving better radio frequency transmission characteristics, such as homogeneity and power efficiency of B1+ field. In case of body torso imaging, the coaxial waveguide prevents unwanted specific absorptive rate (SAR) deposition outside the target region and thus, effectively decreases local peak SAR values by factor of 5. A 3-fold B1+ gain in the prostate can be achieved with the coaxial waveguide in comparison with the initially proposed travelling wave setup.