Designing RF coils for magnetic resonance imaging

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is a popular non-invasive technique for imaging soft tissue structures within the human body. Due to the increasing widespread use of MRI scanners, many design methods now exist for their principle hardware components, such as RF coils. One such method for designing RF coils is presented here following a time-harmonic target-field approach. A current density solution is found on the coil such that some desired homogeneous magnetic field is induced upon an asymmetrically located target region within the scanner. This requires solving an ill-conditioned integral equation, which is done so using regularization and a combination of penalty functions. The complex, time-dependent current density solution is approximated by a static coil winding pattern. The effect of incorporating shielding into the system is also considered.