Concentric-loops coil reducing imaging noise and enhancing imaging SNR compared to traditional single-loop coil

Motivation: To improve MR imaging performance using advanced RF coil. Goal(s): To provide a new RF coil with largely improved signal-to-noise (SNR) compared to traditional single-loop surface coils. Approach: We designed a two concentric (primary and secondary) loops RF coil, and evaluated the coil performance via electromagnetic simulation and phantom tests. Results: The concentric-loops coil produces 1.4-1.6 times higher B1 close to the coil plane, and 15% to 30% noise reduction, resulting in approximately 1.7-2.6 folds SNR gain compared to the traditional single-loop coil across different nuclei and field strengths (17O at 10.5T, 31P at 7T and 1H at 1.5T). Impact: This simple novel coil can be optimized and adapted for a broad range of MRS and MRI imaging applications with largely reduced imaging noise, improved coil sensitivity and approximately doubled imaging SNR as compared to the traditional single-loop coil.