Analysing radio-frequency coil arrays in high-field magnetic resonance imaging by the combined field integral equation method

We present the combined field integral equation (CFIE) method for analysing radio-frequency coil arrays in high-field magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Three-dimensional models of coils and the human body were used to take into account the electromagnetic coupling. In the method of moments formulation, we applied triangular patches and the Rao-Wilton-Glisson basis functions to model arbitrarily shaped geometries. We first examined a rectangular loop coil to verify the CFIE method and also demonstrate its efficiency and accuracy. We then studied several eight-channel receive-only head coil arrays for 7.0 T SENSE functional MRI. Numerical results show that the signal dropout and the average SNR are two major concerns in SENSE coil array design. A good design should be a balance of these two factors.