Evaluation of High Temperature Superconducting (HTS) Coil Performance Gain for 3T Small Animal MR Imaging

Introduction It has been widely reported that substantial signal to noise ratio (SNR) gain can be achieved through the use of the high-temperature superconducting (HTS) surface coil. Due to its complex and expensive design and construction, computational simulation is an essential design tool [1]. However estimating the likely performance gain of the HTS coil where accurate modelling of important parameters such as loaded Q factor and SNR gain in MR imaging experiments has not yet been reported. Firstly this work reports an FDTD mesh based numerical mouse model which will accurately simulate a realistic loading effect on the HTS coil at 3T. Secondly, techniques are developed to assess the high Q factor and SNR gain, and comparisons are made with that of the room temperature copper coil. Finally MR imaging experiments performed on room temperature copper coils to further validate the accuracy of the developed method.