Wireless MRI with a stand-alone, platform-independent wireless integrated radio-frequency/shim coil array and cloud-based data processing workflow - PROJECT SUMMARY / ABSTRACT Technical advances in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) have led to a wide range of imaging techniques, contrast mechanisms, and clinical applications. However, despite marked progress in radio-frequency (RF) and shim coil technologies, the traditional MRI scanner architecture currently used on virtually all scanners still has major limitations. RF coil arrays require wired connections to the bulky receiver chain in the scanner and the machine room via bulky cable assemblies, which can result in long setup times, patient discomfort and motion, lower signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) from crosstalk, loss of transmit power from power dissipation, and RF burns from induced currents. These issues are further exacerbated with modern high-channel-count or flexible RF coil arrays. In addition, conventional low-order spherical harmonic shim coils require wired connections to amplifiers in the machine room and cannot effectively shim localized static magnetic field inhomogeneities (∆B0) in the human body, leaving artifacts that severely degrade the image quality in many applications. We previously proposed two coil designs to address some of these limitations: 1) Our novel integrated RF/wireless (iRFW) coil design enables MR imaging and the wireless transfer of data from/to peripheral devices with a single coil array for low-throughput applications such as wireless physiological monitoring, but not yet for the wireless transfer of MRI data, which requires further development; 2) Our integrated parallel reception, excitation, and shimming (iPRES) coil design enables MR imaging and an effective shimming of localized B0 inhomogeneities with a single integrated RF/shim coil array. However, such iRFW and iPRES coil arrays remain limited by the bulky wired connections and receiver chain required to transfer the MRI data. Our goal is to address these limitations by developing a highly innovative wireless MRI scanner architecture based on a stand-alone, platform-independent high-channel-count wireless integrated RF/shim coil array with on-board received chain and cloud-based data processing workflow that will enable wireless MRI and localized B0 shimming with a single coil array. This paradigm shift in MRI scanner architecture will eliminate all cables from the coil array and the bulky receiver chain embedded in the scanner, thus drastically reducing the system complexity, footprint, and cost, while making the entire receiver chain and data processing workflow (including with third-party advanced reconstruction methods) compatible with scanners from different manufacturers, and improving the freedom of positioning, patient comfort, safety, SNR, spatial fidelity, image quality, diagnostic accuracy, and clinical utility for a wide range of MRI applications throughout the human body. Specifically, we will develop the technology to enable this novel wireless MRI scanner architecture and we will integrate it with a 48-channel wireless integrated RF/shim head/neck coil array to demonstrate its feasibility and advantages for human brain imaging, which will open up exciting new avenues for MRI.
