Surface receive coil dedicated for rat kidney with high sensitivity magnetic resonance imaging

We propose a novel method based on an inverse problem to design a single channel radio frequency (RF) receive coil for magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) with an optimized signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) for imaging the rat kidney. We identified a dedicated curved-surface coil design for use on the rat body surface utilizing inverse problem analysis using direct current calculation and quantitatively evaluated the indicators of coil performance using alternating current calculation. The proposed coil achieved increased SNR and signal intensity responses that were respectively 1.05- and 2-fold higher than those of conventional surface coils. In the future, we will fabricate a prototype coil and perform the MRI of the rat kidney to diagnose kidney diseases.