IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON BIOMEDICAL ENGINEERING, VOL. 46, NO.

3, MARCH 1999

353

A Hybrid Inverse Approach Applied to the Design

of Lumped-Element RF Coils
Hiroyuki Fujita,* Member, IEEE, Labros S. Petropoulos, Member, IEEE, Michael A. Morich, Member, IEEE,
Shmaryu M. Shvartsman, and Robert W. Brown

Abstract A combination of inverse procedures is employed

in the design of radio-frequency (RF) coils with specific examples in, but not restricted to, magnetic resonance imaging. The
first inverse procedure is the use of functional methods for the
optimization of coil characteristics subject to restrictions on the
field behavior. Continuous current distributions are derived from
analysis of the fields they are required to produce. To make use of
these distributions at a desired frequency, the method of moments
is applied as a second inverse procedure to a discretized version of
the current distribution. The advantage of this hybrid technique
is that it provides a computational algorithm for optimization of
feeding, tuning, impedance matching and other aspects of RF coil
design. A prototype RF coil has been built using the engineering
values predicted by the theory. Experimental results including
images acquired from the prototype coil are presented.
Index Terms Lumped-element radio-frequency (RF) coil,
magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), method of moments, target
field approach.

I. INTRODUCTION

NEW approach using a combination of inverse methods

is applied in the design of radio-frequency (RF) coils.
The two techniques are the so-called target field method and
the method of moments. Although the present paper deals with
a specific application of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI),
the methodology can be used for a variety of applications in
coil designs.
The target field technique is based on functional methods
in the optimization of electromagnetic coils, and it was first
presented by Turner [1] for a cylindrical fast-switching lineargradient MRI system. The general idea is to extremize a
characteristic quantity subject to a set of field constraints inside
a desired imaging volume. The Turner archetypal example is
the minimization of energy (or inductance) of the coil, in order
to increase the switching rates, while the magnetic field is constrained to be linear over a target volume. What is important
in this procedure is that by imposing the characteristics of the
field inside a specified volume with a set of constraint points
(with the aid of Lagrange multipliers), the continuous source
Manuscript received September 26, 1997; revised August 31, 1998. This
work was supported by Picker International, Inc. Asterisk indicates corresponding author.
*H. Fujita is with the Magnetic Resonance Division, Picker International, Inc., 595 Miner Road, Cleveland, OH 44143 USA (e-mail: (hfujita@mr.picker.com).
L. S. Petropoulos and M. A. Morich are with the Magnetic Resonance
Division, Picker International, Inc., Cleveland, OH 44143 USA.
S. M. Shvartsman and R. W. Brown are with the Department of Physics,
Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH 44106 USA.
Publisher Item Identifier S 0018-9294(99)01851-0.

currents are generated by the extremization equations. Such

an approach to solving electromagnetic problems is usually
referred to as an inverse approach.
Heretofore, the above inverse method has not been applied
to RF coil structures. Birdcage resonators [2], which offer
excellent transverse-field homogeneity and quadrature performance [leading to high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR)], have been
widely used as RF coils in MRI. A number of researchers
have investigated their properties, and the network theory
of birdcage coils has been well established [3]. The set of
such coils has not, however, been optimized with respect to
inductance or SNR. Moreover, little in the way of complex
lumped-element (LE) RF coil geometry has been reported for
MRI beyond variations on the themes of the birdcage resonator
and of phased arrays of loop coils.
The application of inverse methods to RF coils requires a
generalization from static limits to harmonic time dependence.
In general, for complex LE RF coil structures, a rich resonant
spectrum exists. Optimization must be carried out such that
the mode with the requisite currents is identified and tuned
to the desired imaging frequency. As a practical matter, it
is both time-consuming and nontrivial to determine and tune
these optimized modes in the laboratory without theoretical
guidance.
The method of moments [4] is, in the first instance, a
mathematical procedure in which a continuous operator equation describing the physical problem is transformed into a
set of matrix equations by first discretizing the operator
equation, then performing a scalar product on it with selected
weighting vector functions, and finally performing appropriate
integrations over which the selected weighting vector functions
are defined.
The method of moments has been successfully applied to the
analysis of an unloaded and loaded RF birdcage coil with and
without a shield [5][7]. A slotted-tube resonator likewise has
been analyzed with good success [8], [9]. We here analyze
a different class of coil structures that, among other things,
allow us to consider the current patterns arising from the
optimization methodology.
What is achieved in the work presented in this paper
[10][14] is a two-step procedure where the first step is the
utilization of the target field technique to find a discretized
current distribution on a given coil geometry. The stream
function technique [15] is employed for discretizing the continuous current distributions. The second step is the theoretical
determination, using the method of moments, of both the

00189294/99$10.00 1999 IEEE

354

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON BIOMEDICAL ENGINEERING, VOL. 46, NO. 3, MARCH 1999

frequency spectrum and the capacitive distribution that leaves

the desired mode correctly tuned at a target imaging frequency.
A prototype LE RF coil has been constructed, and a set of
experimental results has been compared to the theory. Good
agreement has been found from these measurements. Using
this coil as a transmit/receive configuration in a linear mode
at 1.5 T, we have carried out echo planar imaging (EPI)
experiments for head imaging with good SNR. It is noted that
all the experiments discussed in the paper have been performed
on a 1.5 T Picker Edge MRI Scanner.

Or in scalar forms

(6)

(7)
II. FUNCTIONAL METHOD WITH CONSTRAINTS
We first consider the determination of the desired coil
current patterns required for the production of uniform fields.
Although this is carried out in a static electromagnetic framework, the relevance for RF coils is established in the next
section.
For our application, the RF coil structure is formed around
a cylinder whose radius and total length are denoted by
and , respectively. Defining the axial direction as the -axis,
which is the direction of the main magnet field, an RF field
direction along the -axis is required, constituting a linear
mode. Assuming that the source current is distributed on the
surface of the cylinder, the general expression of the current
density distribution is

(8)
Recall that the

component may be written as

(9)

A Bessel-function series representation of the Green function

together with the above current forms yield an expression for
component of the RF field as
the

(1)
The conservation of current, the vanishing of the axial current
component at the coil ends, and the restriction to the familiar
dependence (e.g., birdcage coil) for uniform
sinusoidal
transverse fields all lead to the expressions for the components
given by
of
for

(2)
for

(3)

(10)
with
(11)

are modified Bessel functions of the

and , , and
indicated order. The expression of the stored magnetic energy
can be reduced to the form

are the Fourier coefficients and

.
where
The generalized Green function in cylindrical coordinates is
(12)
The task at hand is to find the current density distribution
component of the RF field obeying the
that generates a
constraint equation(s)
(4)
and
are modified Bessel functions of the order
where
, and
( ) is the lesser (greater) of the (observation
(source point).
point) and the
The vector potential is
(5)

for

(13)

corresponds to the desired field

The constraint value
of such constraint
behavior at the point . The number
points selected depends upon the degree of uniformity needed.
Although intuitive but reasonable, we expect that the minimum total energy may correspond to the improved SNR. For
this reason, we choose the total field energy as the quantity
to be extremized. This illustrates how the design method is

FUJITA et al.: DESIGN OF LUMPED-ELEMENT RF COILS

355

carried out, and it is relevant to those cases where one wishes

to minimize inductance, for instance.
is therefore
The constrained functional
(14)
with respect to
Minimizing
number of equations

gives formally an infinite

We consider the theoretical basis for the electromagnetic

application of the moment method for harmonic time dependence
. We also assume that thin-wire approximation is
adequate for the problem under consideration. For a perfect
conductor, surface currents are induced on the surface of
.
the conductor, which produce a scattered electric field
The scattered electric field derived from the Green function
solution for the vector potential in the Lorentz gauge is

(20)

(15)
The problem reduces to a finite matrix inversion calculation
) after truncating the summation over
(in order to find the
by a sufficiently large, but finite, upper limit ( ). The
are ascertained by the original constraint equations. In compact
matrix form, the above expression (15) is written as
(16)
) matrix for Fourier coefficients
where represents a (
,
a(
) matrix corresponding to a quantity in
in (15), a (
) matrix for Lagrange multipliers, and
a(
) matrix for the rest in the right hand side of (15).
On the other hand, using both the magnetic field (10) and the
constraint (13), the magnetic field constraint value is realized
as

where
function

is the three-dimensional free-space Green

(21)
the distance between the observation point and the
with
source point ,
is the current vector, and
is
the wave number in free space. The integration is performed
along the current path .
For wires with large conductivity, the general condition at
the surfaces of these conductors
(22)
may be used to good approximation for the field components
stands for impressed
parallel to those surfaces, where
electric field.1 This leads to Pocklingtons integral equation

(17)
is the matrix representation of the field constraint
where
stands for the transpose of matrix. From (16)
value, and
and (17), the Lagrange multiplers are given by
(18)
Finally, the Fourier components (
density are evaluated by

) of the continuous current

(19)
Using a stream function technique, the discrete wire patterns
for constant current as an approximation to the optimized
continuous current distribution are found. Given the wire
component
patterns and using the BiotSavart law, the
of the RF field can be independently calculated to verify that
one has a good approximation to the imposed magnetic field
constraints.
III. THE METHOD

OF

MOMENTS

The wire patterns found in the static framework of the

previous section must be resonated at just the right imaging
frequency. For this purpose, the method of moments is used
to analyze the fields and currents at the higher frequencies.

(23)
An inverse problem has been established where the current
is the unknown function to be found from boundary
condition (22).
The method of moments is now applied to reduce Pocklingtons integral equation to a system of simultaneous linear
algebraic equations for the wire current segments. The conducting body is modeled by an approximation wherein it
is subdivided into wire segments (called monopoles). The
approximation may be made as accurate as necessary by
increasing the number of such monopoles.2 To establish a
directional basis, define a V-shaped dipole in terms of two
consecutive monopoles in the following way. We construct
weighting vector functions over the dipoles that vanish, like
currents, at the boundaries of the dipole. The weighting
vector function, which is tangential to the surface of the wire
1 When ohmic losses are taken into account, the right-hand side of (22) is
changed from zero to a term involving the surface impedance of the wire.
2 The number required for good accuracy increases when higher and higher
frequencies are considered.

356

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON BIOMEDICAL ENGINEERING, VOL. 46, NO. 3, MARCH 1999

(conductor), is taken to be [5], [6], [16],

st monopole

(24)

th monopole
connects the two
and zero everywhere else. The vector
and
, and
connects the two points,
points,
and
. Thus,
and
are the unit vectors giving the
two directions of the th V-shaped dipole. The sinusoidal
basis (24) is convenient because of the simplicity of its
derivatives, its resemblance to harmonic wave forms, and the
good convergence it affords. Note that as we move from one
dipole to the adjacent, they overlap corresponding to the fact
that the midpoint of one dipole is the endpoint of the next
dipole, and so on.
is expanded in terms of the weighting
The wire current
vector functions that are tangential to the surface of the wire
(25)
is the unknown current coefficient of the th dipole.
where
The net current at any point gets contributions from both
dipoles that overlap at that point. The substitution of the
expansion (25) into (23) followed by a dot product with the
th weighting vector function and the integration of both
sides along the th -shaped dipole give forth the linearized
problem

approximation assumes a delta function for the impressed

, and the numerical results for it are
electric field
accurate for the frequencies and the voltage gaps considered
herein.
We are set to analyze an arbitrary pattern of wire elements given an external voltage excitation arrangement (i.e.,
). The unknown current coefficients of a given coil
structure with a selected driving port can be obtained by
inverting the linear matrix problem (26). To find the coils
input impedance, we define the input impedance as
(29)
,
, and
are the input impedance, the
where
input (excitation) voltage and the input current, respectively.
The existing resonant modes associated with the coil are
revealed by studying the coils input impedance. In practice,
it may be necessary to simultaneously adjust the magnitude
of the input impedance to match the impedance of an external
excitation source. This requires the addition of a matching
capacitance and, furthermore, the relaxation of the requirement
that the imaginary part of the input impedance strictly vanish,
in the determination of the resonant frequency.
Lumped tuning capacitors are also needed, in order to shift
the frequency spectrum so that one resonant mode matches
up with the desired operating MRI Larmor frequency. The
insertion of a tuning capacitor (capacitance ) implies that the
associated with th V-shaped
diagonal matrix element
dipole is altered by
(30)
The aforementioned matching capacitor insertion (capacitance
) implies that the input current is modified by

(26)
is the generalized impedance matrix between
where
and
shaped dipoles

(27)
and the

th generalized voltage matrix element is

(28)

and
is dropped
Note that the index tan for
is tangential to the surface of the conductor.
since
is obtained from (20) by the substituThe quantity
. The integrations in (27) and (28) are
tion
performed along the th V-shaped dipole.
are determined by the
The voltage matrix elements
location of the external power source. They can be scaled to
unit value if the corresponding dipoles are directly connected
to a single source; otherwise they are set to zero.3 This
3 Note

that numerical plots such as a magnetic field surface plot given later
in this paper are obtained using the excitation voltage of 1 V.

(31)
IV. DESIGN
To verify the analytical model, we have proceeded with the
construction of a prototype LE RF coil. The radius of the coil
(designed for brain imaging, in particular) and its length are
cm and
cm, respectively. Three
taken to be
field constraint points are imposed to define the uniformity of
component of the RF field inside a 20-cm diameter
the
imaging volume (DSV).4 The first constraint, or near-center
point, defines the magnitude of the RF field inside the DSV
to be 23.5 T. Although intuitive, the other two constraints
are meant to allow a tradeoff between uniformity and better
signal-to-noise by imposing manageably small reductions in
the RF field value from the near-center point value. The second
constraint imposes a decrease in the RF field at a point along
the -axis by 10% and the third constraint reduces the RF field
by 28% at a point on the -axis, both points residing inside the
20-cm DSV. The set of these constraints is shown in Table I.
4 Obviously, there exist many ways of choosing a set of constraints. Our
particular choice is a set corresponding to a case where a typical birdcage
head coil is loaded with a homogeneous head phantom.

FUJITA et al.: DESIGN OF LUMPED-ELEMENT RF COILS

357

TABLE I
CONSTRAINT SET USED FOR THE DESIGN OF THE LINEAR MODE RF COIL

 (in m)

 (in rad)

z (in m)

BxC (in T)

0.001
0.100
0.001

0.000
0.000
0.000

0.000
0.000
0.100

0.000 023 50
0.000 021 15
0.000 017 00

first generated to determine the principal mode, which is that

mode where the loop currents are uniform and therefore match
the uniform currents found in the discretization procedure. The
lowest resonant mode is determined to be the principal mode.5
The method-of-moments analysis yields the values for a set of
pF,
pF, and
capacitance values to be
pF such that the LE RF coil produces a desired
homogeneous transverse field at 64 MHz (Fig. 5) when its
input impedance is matched to 50 . In addition, a computed
sagittal field behavior at 64 MHz is shown in Fig. 6. We arrive
and
here by considering the
at the particular ratio of
lengths of the inner and outer conducting loops.

V. RESULTS

Fig. 1. Axial component of the continuous current density of the LE RF coil

as a function of the axial position z in meters.

The series of design steps described in the previous sections

is now followed in this prototype coil development. Using the
set of constraint points and employing the energy minimization
technique, we obtain the continuous current distribution for
this coil shown in Fig. 1. The stored energy is computed to be
0.2295 10 [Joules]. The next step is the discretization of
the continuous current density. The task is to find the discrete
current pattern that closely approximates the behavior of the
continuous current density. As advertised, the stream function
, the current density
technique is employed. Since
can be expressed as
(32)
where is called a stream function. Using the stream function,
continuous current contour plot is generated. For the prototype
coil, the continuous current density can be quite reasonably
approximated by four loops wrapped around the lateral surface
of the cylindrical form. Two of the loops, a smaller one
concentrically inside the other, lie on the one side of the lateral
surface. A mirror-image pair of loops lies on the other side
(Fig. 2). Applying the BiotSavart law to the discrete current
pattern, the static RF field is found to agree with the original
constraint values given in Table I to an accuracy of 2%.
Starting with the discrete current distributions, the method of
moments is applied to both investigate the properties of the coil
and resonate the coil at the desired imaging (RF) frequency.
The schematic of the LE RF coil including the capacitor
locations as well as a driving port, as derived and studied with
the method of moments, is shown in Fig. 3. The coil structure
is approximated by a set of 144 thin-wire V-shaped dipoles.
The input impedance frequency spectrum (shown in Fig. 4) is

Based on the predicted values for the capacitance values

as derived from the method of moments, we constructed a
prototype four-loop LE RF coil. Current wire patterns were
made of adhesive-backed copper foil (1.3 cm in width). The
tests for this study were carried out in linear polarization mode
where the magnetic field is predominately in the -direction,
rather than in quadrature mode. Employing a Hewlett-Packard
network analyzer, the capacitance values for which the unloaded coil resonates at 64 MHz were found to be
pF,
pF, and
pF, in 10% to
30% agreement with the theoretical values. The agreement
is quite reasonable in view of detail differences between the
coil construction and the thin-wire approximation used in the
mathematical modeling. The next tests were with a loaded coil
in both transmit and receive modes. The procedure is to tune
to the Larmor frequency of 63.7 MHz for a phantom object
(20-cm diameter and 18.5-cm length) containing a solution
made of 5-mM CuSO 5H O and 100-mM NaCl which is
often used to imitate the size and the dielectric behavior of a
human head. Matching the input impedance of the coil to 50
, we had to modify the values for the capacitances. The final
pF,
pF,
capacitance values, after tuning, were
pF for the loaded prototype LE RF coil. Note
and
that we did not model a loaded coil in the numerical work so
that there were no theoretical capacitance values for the loaded
condition. With this setup, scattering parameters have been
measured. The resonance measurement for the linear mode,
, was measured to be 33 dB. The unloaded
for the
, while the loaded
for the coil was
coil was
. Placing the coil inside the magnet and loading it
with the same phantom object, the measured SNR was 166,
while the uniformity of the coil was measured to be 70.73%
at 25-cm DSV. Transverse and sagittal images of the phantom
object acquired using this prototype LE RF coil are shown in
Fig. 7, confirming the qualitative agreement with the computed
field plots given previously. The MRI sequence employed in
order to obtain the images was a spin echo (SE) sequence with
ms, TR
ms, TH
imaging parameters to be TE
mm, and field of view (FOV)
cm
(slice thickness)
while the acquisition matrix size was 128 256.
5 Refer to Section VI for other connection schemes in which the discretized
loops are connected differently, giving rise to more than one resonant mode.

358

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON BIOMEDICAL ENGINEERING, VOL. 46, NO. 3, MARCH 1999

Fig. 2. One quadrant of the two concentric loops approximating the derived continuous current distribution on one side of the lateral surface of the
cylinder. The horizontal axis is the azimuthal angle  in radians, and the vertical one is z in meters. Two additional loops reside on the other side
as mirror images of the first pair.

Fig. 3. A schematic representation of the derived LE RF coil with both a

capacitive network and a driving port. The pattern shown is wrapped around
a cylindrical form, whose symmetry axis would be vertical in this figure, to
produce the physical coil.

The next attempt was to modify the LE RF coil to a

receiver mode only. In this application, we had to implement a
decoupler circuit to each of the four loops and another circuit
that isolates the LE RF coil during the transmission mode. As
an RF transmitter coil, the whole body RF coil was used for the
reason that the body coil, because of its longer diameter and
length, generates a more uniform RF field inside the desired
imaging volume. Since the transmission field generated by the
body coil has better uniformity than that of the field generated
by the small prototype LE RF coil, an improvement of the SNR
for the receiver coil is expected. Placing the LE RF coil into
the magnet operating in the receiver mode only and using the
same phantom object as indicated previously, the SNR for the
coil jumped to 214, which was a 30% improvement over the
previous case. In this situation, the uniformity of the image
as acquired by the LE RF coil was increased to 72%. As a
next step, we performed in vivo imaging of a human volunteer
using the LE RF coil as a receiver and the whole body coil as
a transmitter. Fig. 8 shows transverse slices of the head image
which were acquired using a multishot EPI sequence with TE
ms, TR
ms, TH
mm, FOV
cm, and
acquisition matrix of 256 256.
VI. DISCUSSION

Fig. 4. The lowest mode in the input impedance frequency spectrum for the
LE RF coil.

The proposed RF coil design technique leads to an efficient design procedure where certain expensive and timeconsuming efforts in the laboratory are minimized. The target
coil specifications have been found to be in good numerical
agreement with the measurements based on the constructed
prototype. Imaging experiments were performed to validate
the procedure.
As demonstrated in the present paper, we have chosen a
simple connection scheme in which all the discretized loops
derived by the static optimization technique are connected

FUJITA et al.: DESIGN OF LUMPED-ELEMENT RF COILS

Fig. 5. Magnetic field behavior in the transverse plane (z

are given in units of meters.

359

0) for the LE RF coil in units of Tesla at a resonant frequency of 64 MHz. Lengths

Fig. 6. Contour plot of magnetic field behavior in the sagittal plane (y = 0)

for the LE RF coil at a resonant frequency of 64 MHz. The horizontal axis
is x in meters, and the vertical one z in meters.

loops may be connected in either series or parallel (or a

more complicated scheme with respect to the connections),
depending upon each situation. If the loops are connected in
series, only one resonant mode is expected, since only one
current parameter is required to define the total system, and
this is currently the case considered in the present paper.
One might ask what happens if the loops are connected in
a more complicated manner. The latter case is discussed in
[11], [14], for instance. In this case, the use of the method
of moments becomes essential in analyzing
field behavior
corresponding to each resonant mode of the coil.
In the present paper, we minimize the energy (inductance)
of the coil. By minimizing this quantity, we reduce the stored
energy of the coil, and hence reduce the sensitive noise volume
of the coil. This, in turn, tends to increase SNR. Of interest
for further study would be the consideration of the appropriate
functionals leading to optimum values for SNR over a target
region of interest.
Although in the present paper loading effects are not included, at higher frequencies they must be taken into account
in the modeling. It is important to be able to predict electromagnetic coupling with biological objects, such as the human
head, at high frequencies so that one can, for example, estimate
energy deposition in tissues and predict interactions between
the coil and the object being imaged.
VII. CONCLUSIONS

in series. However, as one might expect, there exist several

options concerning how each discretized loop is connected
with each other, and the choice of the connection is made
on the basis of physical considerations. A set of discretized

A novel technique for designing RF coils in MRI has

been presented. Although a particular example in the present
paper, used to validate the technique, deals with a cylindrical
geometry for a coil structure, this technique may be applied to

360

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON BIOMEDICAL ENGINEERING, VOL. 46, NO. 3, MARCH 1999

(a)

(b)
Fig. 7. (a) Transverse and (b) sagittal images of the phantom object acquired
using the prototype LE RF coil. A SE sequence was used with imaging
parameters to be TE
30 ms, TR = 800 ms, TH = 10 mm, and FOV
= 30 cm, while the acquisition matrix size was 128 256.

other geometries such as planes. Moreover, an adequate choice

for a set of magnetic field constraints can be implemented
in the present theoretical framework to derive desired coil
characteristics, such as short length or openness, as may be
appropriate to interventional MR applications. The technique
may be expanded to vertical field MRI systems which have
different polarization requirements from conventional horizontal field MRI systems. This proposed technique should aid
in producing optimized RF coils for different applications

Fig. 8. Different transverse slices of the head images acquired using the
prototype LE RF coil. A multishot EPI sequence was used with TE = 20
ms, TR = 800 ms, TH = 5 mm, FOV = 24 cm, and the acquisition matrix
of 256 256.

and geometries, while minimizing guess-and-trial procedure

time.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to thank Dr. S. N. Mohapatra for
the support by Picker International, Inc. H. Fujita would also
like to thank Dr. Q. Chen at Tohoku University, Dr. H.
Ochi at the Hitachi Central Laboratory in Japan, and Dr. J.
Jin at University of Illinois (Urbana-Champaign) for valuable
discussions. They are also grateful to the Ohio Supercomputer
Center for necessary computational support and assistance.

FUJITA et al.: DESIGN OF LUMPED-ELEMENT RF COILS

REFERENCES
[1] R. Turner, Minimum inductance coils, J. Phys. E: Sci. Instrum., vol.
21, pp. 948952, 1988.
[2] C. E. Hayes, W. A. Edelstein, J. F. Schenck, O. M. Mueller, and M.
Eash, An efficient, highly homogeneous radiofrequency coil for wholebody NMR imaging at 1.5 T, J. Magn. Reson., vol. 63, pp. 622628,
1985.
[3] J. Tropp, The theory of the bird-cage resonator, J. Magn. Reson., vol.
82, pp. 5162, 1989.
[4] R. F. Harrington, Field Computation by Moment Methods. Piscataway,
NJ: IEEE Press, 1993.
[5] H. Ochi, E. Yamamoto, K. Sawaya, and S. Adachi, Analysis of MRI
antenna inside an RF shield, Inst. Electron. Inform. Commun. Engineers
(IEICE) B-II, vol. J76-B-II, no. 2, pp. 7985, 1993.
[6] H. Ochi, E. Yamamoto, K. Sawaya, and S. Adachi, Analysis of MRI
antenna loaded by a man model, Inst. Electron, Inform. Commun.
Engineers (IEICE) B-II, vol. J76-B-II, no. 4, pp. 253259, 1993.
, Analysis of MRI antenna loaded by an elliptical subject, Inst.
[7]
Electron. Inform. Commun. Engineers (IEICE) D-II, vol. J77-D-II, no.
5, pp. 10181025, 1994.
[8] Q. Chen, Study on magnetic resonance imaging antennas, Ph.D. thesis,
Dept. of Engineering, Tohoku Univ., Sendai 980, Japan, May 1995.
[9] Q. Chen, K. Sawaya, T. Uno, S. Adachi, H. Ochi, and E. Yamamoto,
A three-dimensional analysis of slotted-tube resonator for MRI, IEEE
Trans. Med. Imag., vol. 13, pp. 587593, 1994.
[10] R. W. Brown, H. Fujita, S. M. Shvartsman, M. A. Morich, and L. S.
Petropoulos, Application of inverse methods to the design of MRI RF
coils, in Proc. 4th Int. Workshop on Optimization and Inverse Problems
in Electromagnetism, Abstracts, Brno, Czechoslovakia, June 1921,
1996, p. 35.
[11] M. A. Morich, L. S. Petropoulos, H. Fujita, S. M. Shvartsman, and R.
W. Brown, Technique for designing distributed radio frequency coils
and distributed radio frequency coils designed thereby, U.S. Patent no.
5 689 189, Nov. 18, 1997.
, Radio frequency coils, European Patent 97301432.71234,
[12]
Art. 128(5) EPC, Mar. 4, 1997.
[13] H. Fujita, L. S. Petropoulos, M. A. Morich, S. M. Shvartsman, and R.
W. Brown, An inverse approach applied to the design of distributed
RF coils, in 5th Scientific Meeting and ExhibitionProc. Int. Society
for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine, 1997, p. 1517.
[14] R. W. Brown, H. Fujita, S. M. Shvartsman, M. R. Thompson, M. A.
Morich, L. S. Petropoulos, and V. C. Srivastava, New applications of
inverse methods in the design of MRI coils, Int. J. Appl. Electromagn.
Mech., vol. 9, pp. 277290, 1998.
[15] P. B. Roemer, High speed, high field, planar surface gradient assembly
for fast imaging, presented at SMRM 7th Annu. Meeting, 1988.
[16] J. H. Richmond and N. H. Geary, Mutual impedance of nonplanarskew sinusoidal dipoles, IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat., vol. AP-23,
pp. 412414, Mar. 1975.

Hiroyuki Fujita (M98) received dual B.A. degrees in physics and mathematics from Monmouth
College, Monmouth, IL, in 1992, after attending
the School of Science and Engineering, Waseda
University, Tokyo, Japan. He received the M.S.
and Ph.D. degrees in physics from Case Western
Reserve University, Cleveland, OH, in January and
May of 1998, respectively.
He is a Staff Scientist in the Magnetic Resonance
Division, Picker International, Inc., Cleveland, OH.
He is named on two patents for coil design.
Dr. Fujita belongs to the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology
Society, the International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine, and
the American Physical Society.

361

Labros S. Petropoulos (M93) received the B.Sc.

degree from the University of Athens, Greece, and
the Ph.D. degree from Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH.
He is a Staff Scientist in the Magnetic Resonance
Division of Picker International Inc., Cleveland,
OH. His research interests at Picker are focused on
the main magnet and pulsed gradient coil technologies. He is named on 17 patents for coil designs
relative to the field of Magnetic Resonance.
Dr. Petropoulos is a member of IEEE Magnetics
Society and the International Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine.

Michael A. Morich (S81M82) received the B.E.E. degree, magna cum

laude, from Cleveland State University, Cleveland, OH, and the M.S. and
Ph.D. degrees from Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH.
Since 1983, he has been on the technical staff of the Magnetic Resonance
Division of Picker International, Inc., Cleveland, OH, where he presently is
Manager of Magnetics Engineering. His research and development efforts
at Picker have spanned main magnet and pulsed active-shield gradient
technologies, as well as eddy current and RF fields analysis. He holds 20
patents on MRI-related coil technology.
Dr. Morich is a member of the IEEE Magnetics and Antennas and
Propagation Societies.

Shmaryu M. Shvartsman received both the M.S.

and the Ph.D. degrees from Tomsk State University,
Tomsk, Russia, in 1972 and 1976, respectively.
He received the D.Sc. degree in 1987 from P.N.
Lebedev Institute of Physics, Moscow, Russia.
He was on the Teaching and Research Physics
Faculty for 16 years at Tomsk State Pedagogical
University, Tomsk, Russia, and served as a chairman
of its Mathematical Analysis Department for two
years. Since 1992, he has been a Senior Research
Scientist in the physics department at Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH. He is named on two patents in
electromagnetic device design.

Robert W. Brown received the B.Sc. degree from

the University of Minnesota, and the Ph.D. degree
from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT),
Cambridge, in 1968.
Since 1970, he has been on the Physics Faculty at
Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH,
where he presently holds the Chair of Institute
Professor. He has also held visiting appointments
at Brookhaven National Laboratory, the University
of New York at Stony Brook, Stony Brook, Fermi
National Laboratory, and Washington University,
St. Louis, MO. He is named on four patents for coil design.
Dr. Brown belongs to the American Physical Society and the International
Society for Magnetic Resonance in Medicine.