Design, evaluation and application of a modular 32 channel transmit/receive surface coil array for cardiac MRI at 7T

Background Cardiac MR (CMR) at ultrahigh fields (≥7.0 T) is challenged by B1+ inhomogeneities and signal voids which bear the potential to spoil the signal-to-noise (SNR) benefits at 7.0 T. There is a trend towards an ever larger number of transmit and receive channels, to support multidimensional B1+ shimming and parallel imaging. Therefore this work proposes a modular, two dimensional 32-channel transmit and receive array using loop elements and examines its efficacy for enhanced B1+ homogeneity and improved parallel imaging performance.