Patent ID: 8076939

Claim:
A method for producing, with a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) system, an image indicative of a radiofrequency (RF) coil characteristic for each RF coil in an RF coil array, the steps comprising: a) producing with the MRI system, a single density weighted reception profile for the entire RF coil array; b) acquiring, with the MRI system, image data corresponding to a single image while driving one of the RF coils in the RF coil array at a selected transmission voltage, wherein acquiring the image data includes acquiring a single voltage measurement from the one of the RF coils driven at the selected transmission voltage; c) repeating step b) for each RF coil in the RF coil array; d) reconstructing an image for each RF coil in the RF coil array from the image data acquired in steps b) and c); and e) producing a transmission profile map for each RF coil in the RF coil array using the density weighted reception profile produced in step a) and the respective image for each RF coil reconstructed in step d).