Comparison and evaluation of mouse cardiac MRI acquired with open birdcage, single loop surface and volume birdcage coils

Although the quality and speed of MR images have vastly improved with the development of novel RF coil technologies, the engineering expertise required to implement them is often not available in many animal in vivo MR laboratories. We present here an open birdcage coil design which is easily constructed with basic RF coil expertise and produces high quality images. The quality and advantages of mouse cardiac MR images acquired with open birdcage coils were evaluated and compared to images acquired with a bent single loop surface, and standard birdcage coils acquired at 4.7 Tesla. Two low pass open birdcage coils, two single loop surface coils, and a low pass volume birdcage coil were constructed and their B-1 distributions were evaluated and compared. The calculated average signal-to-noise ratio for the left ventricular wall was 10, 23 and 32 for the volume birdcage coil, single loop surface coil and open birdcage coil, respectively. The results demonstrate that the open birdcage coil provides greater sensitivity than the volume coil and a higher signal/contrast-to-noise ratio and B1 homogeneity than the single loop surface coil. The open birdcage coil offers easy access and better quality mouse cardiac imaging than both the single loop surface coil and volume birdcage coil and does not require extensive RF engineering expertise to construct.