Patent ID: 9417307
Filing Date: 2016-08-16
CPC Classification: G01R

Claim Text:
1. A method of determining the performance of one or more receiver coils of a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machine, or a hybrid-MRI machine, comprising a plurality of radiofrequency receiver coils, the method comprising: scanning a 3D phantom, which phantom is uniform, in the MRI machine or in the hybrid-MRI machine; obtaining an individual 3D image of the phantom for each individual receiver coil of the plurality of receiver coils, and also constructing a composite 3D image of the phantom from the composite of the signals received by the plurality of receiver coils, so as to produce n+1 3D images, where n=the number of coils in the plurality of receiver coils; determining a measurement volume from the composite 3D image; obtaining a 3D region of interest measurement volume (ROI determining, for each of the n+1 3D images, (i) the maximum mean signal intensity within the 3D image measurement volume (ROI determining, for each of the n+1 3D images, the signal to noise ratio of the measurement volume (SNR comparing the SNR wherein a SNR mv and/or SNR max and/or the PIU less than the reference value of SNR mv , SNR max and/or PIU, respectively, is considered unacceptable performance.