Low field elliptical MR coil array designed by FDTD

Phased-array in magnetic resonance systems have to be designed minimizing the mutual interaction among nearby coils and this is generally achieved by overlapping adjacent coils. In this paper we describe the use of a numerical solver based on finite- difference time-domain algorithm for determining the overlap distance between two coils that constitute a part of an array system. Using the simulator, we designed a novel array coil composed by two elements with elliptical geometry. The coil was designed for the application in a 0.18 T vertical field MR scanner. A prototype of the designed array was built and tested by laboratory workbench in order to validate the simulated data. Experiments were also done in real low field MR scanner to evaluate the coil performance, which is compared to a standard coil using phantom measurements.