Radio-frequency receiver for magnetic resonance imaging

Abstract

Disclosed herein is an MRI radio-frequency receiver (100) with a connector module (112) for receiving multiple MRI coils (104, 106, 108) with a cumulative maximum of M coil elements. The radio-frequency receiver comprises a receiver module (114) comprising N independent receive channels for digitizing MRI signals. M is larger than N. The radio-frequency receiver comprises a controllable RF switching network (116) for routing radio-frequency signals from the coil elements to the independent receive channels. The radio frequency receiver comprises a serial data connection switching matrix (404) for routing a coil specific serial data connection from the connector module to the receiver module. Machine executable instructions (120) cause a computational system (110) to: control (200) the controllable RF switching network to perform the routing using a radio-frequency switching configuration table (124); receive (500) coil specific type detection signals (406) from the connector module in response to the multiple MRI coils being connected to the connector module; determine (502) independent coil types (410) of the MRI coils by performing lookup operations in a coil type detection table using the coil specific type detection signals; generate (504) serial data connection switching matrix control signals (412) by looking up the individual coil types in a serial data connection control table; control (506) the serial data connection switching matrix using the serial data connection switching matrix control signals; and transfer (508) the coil specific type detection signals to the receiver module to match routing of the radio-frequency signals.

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