A dual frequency coil package system for use in transmitting and receiving at least two frequencies in an MRI system, including a frequency converter coupled to the MRI system to receive a first frequency through the local transmit coil port and convert the first frequency to a second frequency, a second frequency transmit coil to receive the second frequency from the frequency converter and to transmit the second frequency, a dual tuned receiver coil to receive and to output the at least two frequencies, and a switchable receiver to receive the at least two frequencies output from the dual tuned receiver coil and to transmit the first frequency received from the dual tuned receiver coil directly to the MRI system, and to convert the second frequency received from the dual tuned receiver coil to the first frequency before transmission to the MRI system.

A coil assembly for use as a transmission and/or receiving coil in an MR system comprises a dipole antenna assembly with multiple dipole antennas. Connection elements are converted from an electrically conductive state to an electrically non-conductive state. In the electrically conductive state, the dipole antennas form a cylindrical volume coil and/or a conductor loop assembly, in particular a flat conductor loop assembly. The connection elements comprise blocking circuits which automatically block when a high-frequency alternating voltage with a frequency corresponding to the blocking frequency of the connection element blocking circuits is applied to the coil assembly.

An MRI system receive coil arrangement 3 for use with a main MRI scanner arrangement. The arrangement includes at least one primary receive coil 6 having a first impedance at a predetermined frequency and a first size defined by a cross-sectional area bounded by the primary receive coil and at least one auxiliary receive coil 7 having a second impedance at said predetermined frequency and a second size defined by a cross-sectional area bounded by the auxiliary receive coil wherein the first impedance is lower than the second impedance and the first size is larger than the second size.

A magnetic resonance coil and a magnetic resonance imaging system using the same are provided. The magnetic resonance coil may include an antenna, an amplifier, and a protective circuit. The antenna may be configured to receive a radio frequency (RF) signal emitted from an object. The antenna may not resonate with the RF signal. The amplifier operably coupled to the antenna configured to amplify the RF signal. The protective circuit may be configured to protect the antenna and the amplifier.

In various embodiments of the invention, a solid sample magic angle spinning nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) probe can utilize an appropriate inductance parent coil with a fixed capacitor and introducing an idler coil with a variable capacitor which can inductively couple to the parent coil by adjusting the variable capacitance of the idler coil. By coupling the idler coil to the parent coil in this manner a double resonance circuit can be provided without the disadvantages of prior art coils. In an alternative embodiment of the invention, a solid sample magic angle spinning nuclear magnetic resonance probe can utilize an appropriate inductance parent coil with a fixed capacitor, introducing an idler coil with a variable capacitor in a first region and two variable inductor coupling coils and two coupling coils in a second region, where the two variable inductors are connected to the parent coil to reduce the number of coils in the sample region of the NMR probe, where variable inductors can inductively couple to the parent coil by adjusting one or both the capacitance of the variable capacitor of the idler coil and/or adjusting the variable inductors to observe a tuned condition between the parent coil and the idler coil.

An optically controlled, multi-transmitter magnetic resonance imaging system for multi-nuclear, high field applications is disclosed. In one embodiment, the MRI system may include a dual-tuned radio-frequency (RF), on-coil power amplifier for amplifying RF power signals at two or more frequencies for the multi-nuclear excitations for use in a dual-tuned coil MRI device or a nested coil MRI device. In one particular implementation, the dual-tuned amplifier of the MRI system may receive optical carrier signals through the broadband optical interface to control the on-coil amplifiers. A variable effective inductor circuit for use in tuning the dual-tuned amplifier is also disclosed. The variable effective inductor circuit includes a gallium nitride (eGaN) field effect transistor (FET) device connected to an inductor. The inductance of the variable effective inductor circuit can be adjusted by modulating a drain-source voltage of the eGaN FET device controlled based on a pulse duration of an optical carrier signal.

Accelerated data acquisition using two-dimensional (“2D”) radio frequency (“RF”) pulse segments as virtual receivers for a parallel image reconstruction technique, such as GRAPPA, is provided. Data acquisition is accelerated using segmented RF pulses for excitation, refocusing, or both, and undersampling k-space along a dimension of the RF pulse segments. In this way, parallel image reconstruction techniques, such as GRAPPA, can be adapted to work with a single RF receive coil. By undersampling the data acquisition and finding correlations between the data from different segments, unsampled data can be recovered. This shortens scan times, yielding the advantages of segmented pulses without the formerly required long scans.

A method of operating a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) apparatus includes exciting a body coil of the MRI apparatus to emit a radio-frequency signal, determining a center frequency of a resonance curve of the body coil, and calculating a magnet target frequency based on the determined center frequency. A magnet is ramped to the magnet target frequency.

A magnetic resonance coil and a magnetic resonance imaging system using the same are provided. The magnetic resonance coil may include an antenna, an amplifier, and a protective circuit. The antenna may be configured to receive a radio frequency (RF) signal emitted from an object. The antenna may not resonate with the RF signal. The amplifier operably coupled to the antenna configured to amplify the RF signal. The protective circuit may be configured to protect the antenna and the amplifier.

The NMR probe head comprises a base and a tube. A coil is arranged in the tube. A tuning and matching circuit is also arranged in the tube adjacent to the coil. The coil and/or the tuning and matching circuit comprise several tunable elements. Several actuators are arranged in the tube for actuating the tunable elements. The actuators are located in in a compact actuator assembly.