Experimental Validation of a PNS Optimized Body Gradient Coil

We report experimental PNS threshold measurements of an asymmetric PNS optimized whole-body gradient coil and compare it to a standard symmetric coil designed without PNS optimization. Stimulation thresholds were measured in 10 healthy adult subjects for five clinically relevant scan positions. The optimized design raised thresholds by up to 47% in four out of the five studied scan positions (head, cardiac, pelvic, and knee imaging positions). These results support the potential value of PNS-optimized asymmetric whole-body gradients for maximizing image encoding performance