Integrated RF coil and sample holder for magnetic resonance microscopy

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Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is now well established as a tool in clinical diagnosis. MRI also has a potential role in very high resolution MRI, otherwise known as magnetic resonance microscopy (MRM) on small tissue samples. This ex-vivo MRM, in principle, allows substantial increase in sensitivity of the MRI measurements to detect cellular/molecular changes underlying disease compared with in-vivo MRI. This is essential for researchers to determine the biological/disease processes that leads to MRI changes in vivo, enhancing the translation of MRI methods to the clinical arena. However undertaking MRM on standard MRI scanners is limited by signal sensitivity and by the size and shape of commercial tissue sample holders. This project addresses these limitations with a new concept that integrates the sensor that detects the MRI signal, a new very high performance RF coil, into a specially designed tissue sample container. This will allow the system users to undertake MRM with image resolution of less than 100 micro-meters in reasonable scan times, this in turn will lead to a significant uptake of this bio-imaging techniques.