An 8-channel TX, 16-channel RX flexible body coil at 7 Tesla using both branches of centrally fed strip lines as individual receive elements

Introduction The strip line element with meanders has proven its capability for head and body imaging at 7 Tesla due to its good decoupling and penetration depth [1, 2]. Previously presented Tx/Rx arrays consisting of elements with central feeding [1, 2, 3] do not support pMRI acceleration in the direction parallel to the strips of the elements. To overcome this drawback, each branch of the element can be used as a separate receiver coil while keeping the advantages of the combined element during transmission. An 8-ch transmit / 16-ch receive flexible body coil was built and tested in phantom measurements and in vivo and compared to an array of the same dimensions but with conventional strip line elements with meanders.