Floating shield current suppression trap

Shield currents or common mode currents affect coil tuning, coil‐to‐coil coupling in phased array coils, image inhomogeneity, and most importantly can cause serious patient burns. Traditionally in MRI, shield currents are reduced by cable traps; they consist of a wound coaxial cable inductor tuned to the desired resonance frequency by a capacitor between end turns of the coaxial cable ground shield. This method increases losses and effects the overall phase distance between the coil and the preamplifiers. We present a cable trap that does not connect or solder to the cable and is completely splitable, allowing easy fitting over any cable without affecting any coil parameters (tuning or phase length). Multiple cables can be placed inside the shield current trap to simultaneously attenuate the shield currents from up to eight cables, as currently designed. The shield current trap reduces shield currents at 64 MHz by ∼30 dB.