• Armen Kocharian, John I Lane, Matt A Bernstein, Chen Lin, Robert J Witte, John Huston, and Joel P Felmlee.
• Magnetic Resonance Laboratory, Department of Radiology, Mayo Clinic and Foundation, Rochester, Minnesota 55905, USA. kocharian.armen@mayo.edu
• J Magn Reson Imaging. 2002 Sep 1; 16 (3): 300-4.

PurposeTo develop and evaluate a hybrid phased array for internal auditory canal (IAC) imaging at 3.0 T.Materials And MethodsA hybrid phased array was designed and built as two circular surface receive-only coils combined with a volume transmit-receive birdcage head coil for simultaneous image acquisition. Phantom and volunteer images were obtained to assess the coil performance.ResultsThe phantom data show that significant signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) improvement was achieved in the region corresponding to the inner ear, i.e., by a factor of 2.5 compared to the standard head coil data. Volunteer IAC image quality was deemed superior as compared to images acquired at 3.0 T using a standard head coil.ConclusionThis hybrid array combined with three-dimensional fast spin-echo (FSE) acquisition resulted in improved high spatial resolution IAC imaging.Copyright 2002 Wiley-Liss, Inc.

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