Phased array coil for implementing parallel MRI in intravascular imaging: A feasibility study

The use of intravascular MRI imaging of vessels will provide high quality images for improved diagnosis and treatment. An intravascular MR receive coil provides high SNR because of proximity to the tissue but respiratory and cardiovascular motion may affect the quality of acquired images. Parallel MRI provides a framework to reduce the scan time using multiple coils. This article presents a novel design of a Phased Array MR receive coil for intravascular imaging which can implement Parallel MRI. Cartesian and Radial GRAPPA are used as the main reconstruction algorithms. We demonstrate that Moving Segment Radial GRAPPA provides good image reconstruction with minimum artifacts when data is under‐sampled by a factor of 16. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Concepts Magn Reson Part A 43A: 267–276, 2015.