APPARATUS, SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR CALIBRATING MAGNETIC RESONANCE RECEIVER COILS

摘要

An apparatus, system and method for calibrating a movable receiver coil in a magnetic resonance imaging environment is described. The method of the invention calibrates the movable receiver coil by dividing the receiver coil into parts and determining electromagnetic interactions of the parts in the environment. The emthod further includes (1) estimating orientation and position information corresponding to the receiver coil and (2) associating electromagnetic interaction data with records such as (a) responses of the receiver coil in various tissue environments to emissions caused by stimuli from external magnetic resonance coils, (b) high-resolution external receiver coil records of emissions from same environments, and (c) measures of self-interactions and mutual interactions among the parts of the receiver coil. The parts of the receiver coil may be connected in series or parallel. The method of the invention further comprises constructing a cost function and a correction function in each tissue environment, and combining the associated records with the cost function to train an automated system to associate any set of interaction records with a scheme of modifications to functions constructed by the receiver coil. The modifications include spatially-varying functions that are added to a spatially-varying multiplier so as to convert constructed image intensities to attributed image activities. The automated system may be an artificial neural network, a genetic algorithm, a statistical least-squares fit computation, or any other known predictors.