A Comparison of Vendor and Mayo-Designed AIR Coil Arrays for Prostate MRI

Accelerated Prostate MRI is an effective way to diagnose and localize prostate cancer clinically. However, the quality of the image is highly dependent on the layout of RF coils used for signal reception. This work aims to evaluate the anterior blanket coil and in-table posterior coil arrays (vendor-provided, GE Healthcare) and new Mayo-developed coil arrays (Mayo arrays). Both array combinations are based on AIR^TM coil technology ^[1]. The Mayo coil is based on high element overlap, allowed by the low mutual inductance of the elements. We compared the arrays in terms of noise correlation and geometry factor (g-factor) using MR images of a humanoid pelvic phantom. Under an IRB-approved protocol, we further evaluated these two quantitative factors as well as the visual quality in images of human subjects. We found that the Mayo-designed AIR coil array provides improved performance versus the GE array.