An Investigation of Triple-Tuned Traps for MRI Receiver Coil Design

Multinuclear MRI/S offers a powerful tool for noninvasive diagnostics and disease monitoring but remains largely underutilized in part due to the intrinsically low sensitivity of X-nuclei scans. This has led to continued research interest into the optimization of multi-nuclear coil designs for double-and triple-tuned coils that can facilitate scaling into higher channel count arrays to increase sensitivity. Here we present a new design for a parallel trap network that can create a simultaneous triple-tuned coil for ¹H, ³¹P and ²³Na at 4.7T. Coils were characterized both on the bench and in the scanner for the relative SNR of the different multi-tuning networks. The parallel network was shown to have a relative SNR gain of over 20% compared to a series network for ¹H imaging. X-nuclei had a decrease in SNR of less than 10% for both ³¹P and ²³Na. Future work involves further optimization of inductor design and placement to improve the X-nuclei sensitivity.