Jean-Baptiste Mathieu1, Bruce C. Amm1, Silke Lechner-Greite2, Seung-Kyun Lee1, Ek Tsoon Tan1, Thomas K-F Foo1, John F. Schenck1, Matt A. Bernstein3, John Huston3
1Diagnostics and Biomedical Technologies, GE Global Research, Niskayuna, NY, United States; 2Diagnostics and Biomedical Technologies, GE Global Research Europe, Garching, Germany; 3Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN, United States
We report on the design of a head-only shielded gradient prototype to be inserted in a specialty 3T head-only magnet for high-performance neuroimaging. The gradient is force- and torque- balanced, and employs asymmetric X and Y gradient and symmetric Z gradient design. This design delivers peak specifications of 88mT/m and 630T/m/s with a commercial gradient driver and a linearity of 16.9% over a 26 cm diameter spherical volume (DSV). The expected image distortion due to gradient nonlinearity was evaluated with simulated brain image with nonlinearity correction.