Comparing Saddle, Slotted-tube and Parallel-plate Coils for Magnetic Resonance Imaging

The paper is concerned with a comparison of the properties of RF coils of three configurations for MRI measurements on small animals. In comparison with the classical saddle coil the proposed modification of slotted-tube coil exhibits identical homogeneity of B₁ field in a larger space. The parallel-plate coil has a satisfactory homogeneity of B₁ field over the whole internal space. The signal-to-noise ratio measured for all three coils is roughly the same and is given by the magnitude of RF pre-amplifier noise. As the slotted-tube and parallel-plate coils have a lower inductance compared with the saddle coil, they can be tuned to resonance on the 200 MHz frequency even at larger dimensions. The results show that the parallel-plate coil has very good properties for the measurement of small animals.