Enhancement of the FVTD Electromagnetics Solver for the Design and Optimization of MRI RF]Coils

This research will develop numerical modeling and optimization techniques for the design of radio-frequency (RF) coils used in Magntetic Resonance Imaging (MRI). These techniques will aid in the design of specific RF coils for interventional MRI procedures which impose unique and challenging demands on the RF coils's performance. The first step will be to enhance the current electromagnetic software that has been developed at the University of Manitoba (UofM) to allow the modeling of specialized circuitry found on MR RF coils. These enhancements will be validated on a standard RF body]coil that is currently being constructed at the UofM imaging laboratory in conjunction with the partner organization. The algorithms will be modified to run on a 264]node computing cluster and thereby allow the use of newly developed optimization algorithms that will be used to optimize the RF coil's performance. This will be done by automatically varying specific user]defined design parameters in the RF coil, such as circuit component vlaues as well as some of the coil's geometrical features. The validity of the optimization algorithms will be validated by using the software to design a novel RF coil for an interventional MRI application and comparing the performance against experimental measurements made on a coil built according to that same design.

Faculty Supervisor:

Dr. Joe LoVetri

Student:

Ian Jeffrey, Gabriel Faucher, Puyan Mojabi

Partner:

Element Life Science

Discipline:

Engineering

Sector:

Life sciences

University:

University of Manitoba