MRI Dual-channel Receiver

With the rapid development of MRI phased array coils and parallel imaging technology, spectrometer with more receiver channels is required. In order to accelerate the process of the image reconstruction, the data transfer between the receiver and the computer should be speed up. A digital receiver based on the PCI bus is proposed to meet these requirements.The proposed receiver is composed of two channels which can be set up rapidly, so it is suitable for parallel imaging acquisition. Variable gain amplifiers are used to increase its dynamic range. High-speed ADC and digital receive processor are used. Each channel has a FIFO memory to cache its data. PCI burst transfer is employed to speed up the data transmission between the receiver and the computer. In order to simplify the structure, single FPGA is used instead of many processors to control the whole receiver. High volume external FIFO is applied to improve the system efficiency.PCI bus can read the receiver’s SDRAM in the speed of up to60MB/s. Experiments show that this receiver is suitable for MRI application.This thesis consists of3parts:The first part briefly describes the basic principles of MRI receiver, as well as the key issues of its implementation which including RF acquisition and digital logics.The second part elaborates the specific design of the receiver including its hardware and software.The third part presents the results of component and integration testing, and MRI images.