Analysis of the interactions between a TMS coil and a standard receive-only RF loop for MR imaging at 3T

Specialized MR hardware is needed to combine non-invasive brain stimulation methods (e.g., TMS) and concurrent acquisition of functional MR images. Such integrated hardware systems enable studying causal relationships between the cortical and subcortical nodes of large-scale brain networks. For best possible imaging performance, all interactions of the stimulation coils on the transmit, encoding and receive system of the MR system should be analyzed on detail. The presented approach enables quantitatively assessing the influence of the TMS coils on MR imaging receive hardware. Understanding the effects could lead to improved design strategies for integrated TMS/MRI systems.