First Intraoral Coil Array for Single-Tooth Dental MRI

Motivation: MRI offers superior contrast to X-ray and CBCT in endodontics that can play an important role in diagnosing dental pathologies. Current RF coils for MRI in dentistry provide only limited SNR, thus limiting spatial resolution. Goal(s): To develop an intraoral coil (IOC) array that can provide high SNR to achieve a few hundred micrometer spatial resolution. Approach: A capacitively decoupled 2-channel IOC array with buccal and lingual elements was placed on a bite form, and phantom and in vivo MRI was performed at 3T. Results: IOC array improves SNR, provides more uniform sensitivity and allows parallel imaging with g-factor<1.07 for 2-fold acceleration. Impact: Intraoral coil arrays enable MRI of sub-millimeter dental structures, while increasing the spatial coverage in oral cavity. Compared to single-loop coils, a more homogeneous receive sensitivity can be achieved and parallel imaging is enabled.