Patent ID: 9541615
Date: 2017-01-10
CPC Classifications: A61B,G01R

Claim:
1. A method for producing a dental image of a subject with a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) system, the steps comprising: a) providing an intra-oral radio frequency (RF) coil, the intra-oral RF coil being a shape of a human dental arch; b) positioning the intra-oral RF coil between an upper jaw and a lower jaw of the subject in an occlusal plane, wherein the intra-oral RF coil extends along the occlusal plane and is orthogonal to a static magnetic field (B0) of the MRI system; c) acquiring image data from the upper jaw and the lower jaw utilizing a transverse component of an excitation field (B1) generated using the MRI system, the transverse component of the B1 field being parallel to the occlusal plane that the intra-oral RF coil is positioned in; and d) reconstructing an image of the upper jaw and the lower jaw from the image data.