A Dichotomization Winding Scheme on a Novel Asymmetric Head Gradient Coil Design With an Improved Force and Torque Balance.

Abstract

The head gradient coil is advantageous for brain imaging compared to the conventional whole-body gradient coil. It is usually asymmetrically designed for the accommodation of human shoulders. The asymmetric head coil has a specific issue associated with an unbalanced force/torque that requires minimization for imaging applications. This paper will improve the force and torque balance solution and propose a dichotomization winding scheme to augment the coil slew rate. A square force and torque optimization enables the available balanced asymmetric head gradient coil design, with a force and torque approaching the minimum level. Subsequently, two practical parallel connection winding schemes were quantitatively analyzed and evaluated. The results show that the proposed dichotomization winding scheme can increase the slew rate to almost twice that of the conventional winding counterpart, without obviously influencing the magnetic field performance.