Non-human primates (NHPs) are vital models for neuroscience research. These animals have been widely used in behavioral, electrophysiological, molecular, and more recently, multimodal neuroimaging and neuro-engineering studies. Several RF coil arrays have been designed for functional, high-resolution brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), but few have been designed to accommodate multimodal devices. In the present study, a 16-channel array coil was constructed for brain imaging of macaques at 3 Tesla (3 T). To construct this coil, a close-fitting helmet-shaped form was designed to host 16 coil loops for whole-brain coverage. This assembly is mountable onto stereotaxic head frame bars, and the coil functions while the monkey is in the sphinx position with a clear line of vision of stimuli presented from outside of the MRI system. In addition, 4 openings were allocated in the coil housing, allowing multimodal devices to directly access visual cortical regions such as V1-V4 and MT. Coil performance was evaluated in an anesthetized macaque by quantifying and comparing signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs), noise correlations, and g-factor maps to a vendor-supplied human pediatric coil frequently used for NHP MRI. The result from in vivo experiments showed that the NHP coil was well-decoupled, had higher SNRs in cortical regions, and improved data acquisition acceleration capability compared with a vendor-supplied human pediatric coil that has been frequently used in macaque MRI studies. Furthermore, whole-brain anatomic imaging, diffusion tensor imaging and functional brain imaging have also been conducted: the details of brain anatomical structure, such as cerebellum and brainstem, can be clearly visualized in T2-SPACE images; b0 SNR calculated from b0 maps was higher than the human pediatric coil in all regions of interest (ROIs); the time-course SNR (tSNR) map calculated for GRE-EPI images demonstrates that the presented coil can be used for high-resolution functional imaging at 3 T.

中文翻译：

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16通道环形阵列，可在3 T进行体内猕猴全脑成像。

非人类灵长类动物（NHP）是神经科学研究的重要模型。这些动物已广泛用于行为，电生理，分子，以及最近的多模式神经成像和神经工程研究。已经为功能性高分辨率脑磁共振成像（MRI）设计了几种RF线圈阵列，但为容纳多模态设备而设计的却很少。在本研究中，构建了一个16通道阵列线圈，用于在3特斯拉（3 T）下对猕猴进行大脑成像。为了构造该线圈，设计了一种紧密贴合的头盔形形式，可容纳16个线圈环以覆盖全脑。该组件可安装在立体定向头架杆上，当猴子处于狮身人面像位置时，线圈发挥作用，并且从MRI系统外部呈现清晰的刺激视线。此外，在线圈外壳中分配了4个开口，使多模式设备可以直接进入视觉皮层区域，例如V1-V4和MT。通过量化和比较信噪比（SNR），噪声相关性和g因子图与经常用于NHP MRI的供应商提供的人类小儿线圈，在麻醉的猕猴中评估线圈性能。体内实验的结果表明，与经常在猕猴MRI研究中使用的供应商提供的人类小儿线圈相比，NHP线圈具有良好的去耦性，在皮质区域具有更高的SNR和改进的数据采集加速能力。此外，还进行了全脑解剖成像，弥散张量成像和功能性脑成像：小脑和脑干等大脑解剖结构的细节，可以在T2-SPACE图像中清晰地看到；从b0映射计算得出的b0 SNR在所有关注区域（ROI）中均高于小儿线圈。为GRE-EPI图像计算的时程SNR（tSNR）图证明了所提出的线圈可用于3 T时的高分辨率功能成像。