CoilGen: Open-source MR coil layout generator.

Area of Science:

• Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI)
• Biomedical Engineering
• Computational Electromagnetics

Background:

• Designing magnetic resonance (MR) gradient and shim coils is complex and time-consuming.
• Current methods often require significant postprocessing effort, hindering rapid prototyping.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop an automated algorithm for generating realizable MR gradient and shim coil layouts.
• To reduce postprocessing effort and enable rapid prototyping of new MR coil designs.

Main Methods:

• The algorithm employs stream function optimization, 2D surface projection, potential discretization, and contour sorting.
• It generates connected, non-overlapping wire paths for given surface meshes and target fields.
• Quality control includes assessing current strength, inductance, and field accuracy.

Main Results:

• The method was successfully demonstrated in four distinct examples, achieving high accuracy in reaching target magnetic fields.
• Optimal discretization was achieved by varying input parameters to generate multiple coil layouts.
• The algorithm demonstrated flexibility and low discretization error in coil layout generation.

Conclusions:

• The presented algorithm enables rapid generation of interconnected coil layouts with high flexibility and low discretization error.
• This significantly reduces overall postprocessing effort for MR coil design.
• The source code is publicly available for further development and application.