Fast and unconditionally safe in vivo MR head protocol for home-made coil prototype assessment at 7T

Depending on the local IRB (Internal Regulation Board) regulations for safety reasons, homemade RF coil prototype assessment through an in vivo experiment can be painful and lengthy administrative process. It includes to document simulations and experimental validations on phantom before being able to proceed. The situation can be even worse, if for some reasons, once it has passed all the acceptance stages, the coil does not deliver as expected in vivo. The process to maybe then rebooted. In this work, we introduce the concept of unconditional safe MR protocol allowing to safely use homemade coil in vivo, at any step of the RF coil development, securing valuable information for the developer, and making sure that neither local nor global SAR limits will be ever reached anywhere in the organ to image. The protocol includes in particular a fast B1+ mapping, which is essential to assess coil behaviour. The strategy can be easily extended to more contrasts, other organs and other magnetic field strengths.