Keywords:
Quality assurance, Image verification, Technical aspects, Surgery, Intraoperative, MR, Neuroradiology brain, MR physics, Interventional non-vascular
Authors:
C. Gagliardo1, A. Napoli2, L. Geraci1, G. COLLURA1, M. Marrale1, T. V. Bartolotta1, C. Catalano2, M. Midiri1, R. Lagalla1; 1Palermo/IT, 2Rome/IT
DOI:
10.1594/ecr2018/C-0012
Aims and objectives
In recent years trans-cranial Magnetic Resonance-guided Focused Ultrasound Surgery (tcMRgFUS) treatments have been performed only using 3T units.
Since following some internal analysis,
planning images obtained using a 1.5T MRI’s body RF coil (as usually done with 3T systems) showed generally reasonable quality in terms of anatomy visualization and SNR but thermal images noise was above acceptable standard for treatments,
a dedicated 2-channels coil was developed to ensure an adequate signal-to-noise ratio (SNR).
The SNR is one of the most commonly used parameters to obtain an objective description of image quality in MRI,
and therefore used for image evaluation,
radiofrequency coil comparison and quality assurance.
Several methods to determine the SNR of MR images have been described in literature [1,
2].
Hence we present the technological methods successfully used with the world-first installation of a tcMRgFUS system on a 1.5T scanner.