Reed-Relay Switched Tuning Circuit for Stretchable RF Coils in Low Field, Portable MRI

Abstract

While MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) technology allows us to get detailed images of the inside of a subject’s body, it most commonly requires very expensive and large-scale machinery which limits the scenarios it can be used in. These types of costly MRI are usually high-field MRI, which operates at magnetic fields of 1.5T and above, and produces images with short scan times and high resolution. Yet because of the drawbacks in accessibility and affordability high-field MRI poses, there has been an effort to devote more research to portable low-field MRI. Low-field MRI opens doors for low-cost and point-of-care imaging but it unfortunately comes at the expense of decreased image quality and greater noise interference. An RF head coil that molds to the user’s head would be able to better excite and receive signal from the subject and counteract some of the inherent disadvantages of low-field MRI. My proposed thesis will pursue the idea of using flexible, subject-adaptable RF head coils in conjunction with an autotuning circuit as a way to extract better signal from a subject at low magnetic fields.