A head and neck array add-on to the two-channel Nova coil using six SCC elements and Nova 32 channel receive array at 7T-MRI

The advantage of low coupling ratios of shielded-coaxial-cable coils (SCCs) are used to obtain an eight-channel head-neck transmit array for 7T-MRI. The six SCCs are combined with the two-channel Nova coil by taking the advantage of low coupling between SCCs and the Nova coil. Low inter element coupling along with the independent radiation regions of the SCCs and the Nova coil made it possible to do a straightforward B1-shimming resulting in a relatively homogeneous magnetic field in both head and neck region. Structural images are acquired with large coverage down to the bifurcation while high SNR is preserved.