Highly decoupled 8x2 transceiver array for human brain at 7T (Rx performance evaluation)

While the Tx performance of the 8x2 transceiver has been shown to achieve excellent amplitude and homogeneity, with its limited coil numbers (16), it is thought to give substantially lower SNR and acceleration in comparison to conventional arrays (8Tx/32Rx). It is recognized however, that the Tx decoupling is also constructive for Rx since the SNR and g-factors benefit from the decreased noise correlation. We evaluated the SNR, g factors, and noise covariance and found that up to an in-plane acceleration value of approximately <=4, the transceiver gives comparable performance to a commercial reference coil.