Passive radiofrequency shimming in the thighs at 3 Tesla using high permittivity materials and body coil receive uniformity correction.

Purpose: To explore the effects of high permittivity dielectric pads on the transmit and receive characteristics of a 3 Tesla body coil centered at the thighs, and their implications on image uniformity in receive array applications.

Theory And Methods: Transmit and receive profiles of the body coil with and without dielectric pads were simulated and measured in healthy volunteers. Parallel imaging was performed using sensitivity encoding (SENSE) with and without pads. An intensity correction filter was constructed from the measured receive profile of the body coil.

Results: Measured and simulated data show that the dielectric pads improve the transmit homogeneity of the body coil in the thighs, but decrease its receive homogeneity, which propagates into reconstruction algorithms in which the body coil is used as a reference. However, by correcting for the body coil reception profile this effect can be mitigated.

Conclusion: Combining high permittivity dielectric pads with an appropriate body coil receive sensitivity filter improves the image uniformity substantially compared with the situation without pads. Magn Reson Med 76:1951-1956, 2016. © 2015 International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine.