Parasitic Element Based Decoupling Network for a Two-Element MRI Phased Array

Abstract

A parasitic-element based Decoupling Network (DN) for 7-Tesla Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) phased arrays is presented to compensate for the effect of mutual coupling between array active elements. The DN network consists of an open circuited parasitic element in parallel between a two-element MRI array, each element in the array is a rectangular loop-shape microstrip transmission line Radio Frequency (RF) coil. L-shaped tunable matching network is integrated, the whole structure is optimized to operate at the resonant frequency of the 7-Tesla MRI system. Numerical modeling of the whole structure is carried out using CST to characterize and verify the performance of the open circuited parasitic element based decoupling network for a two-element MRI array.