阅读说明：本技术 无线线圈中的网格网络 (Mesh network in wireless coil ) 是由 P·F·雷德 A·赖高斯基 R·卡尔德隆里科 于 2018-11-27 设计创作，主要内容包括：一种无线磁共振(MR)信号接收系统包括无线MR线圈(20)和基站(50)。所述无线MR线圈(20)包括线圈元件(22)和电子模块(24),所述线圈元件被调谐为接收MR信号,每个电子模块包括收发器(30)和数字处理器(32)。每个电子模块可操作地连接以接收来自至少一个线圈元件的MR信号。所述基站包括：基站收发器(52),其被配置为与所述无线MR线圈的所述电子模块的所述收发器无线通信；以及基站数字处理器(54)。所述电子模块形成可配置网格网络(60),以将由电子模块接收的MR信号无线地发送到所述基站。所述基站数字处理器被编程为操作所述基站收发器以接收由可配置网格网络无线地发送到所述基站的所述MR信号。(A wireless Magnetic Resonance (MR) signal receiving system includes a wireless MR coil (20) and a base station (50). The wireless MR coil (20) includes a coil element (22) tuned to receive MR signals and electronics modules (24) each including a transceiver (30) and a digital processor (32). Each electronics module is operatively connected to receive MR signals from at least one coil element. The base station includes: a base station transceiver (52) configured to wirelessly communicate with the transceiver of the electronics module of the wireless MR coil; and a base station digital processor (54). The electronic modules form a configurable mesh network (60) to wirelessly transmit MR signals received by the electronic modules to the base station. The base station digital processor is programmed to operate the base station transceiver to receive the MR signals wirelessly transmitted by a configurable mesh network to the base stations.)

1. A wireless Magnetic Resonance (MR) coil, comprising:

a coil element (22) tuned to receive MR signals; and

electronics modules (24), each electronics module including a transceiver (30) and a digital processor (32), each electronics module operatively connected to receive MR signals from at least one coil element;

wherein the electronic modules form a configurable mesh network (60) to wirelessly transmit the MR signals received by the electronic modules to a base station (50).

2. The wireless MR coil according to claim 1, wherein the configurable mesh network (60) is configurable, at least in that each electronics module (24) is programmable to relay MR signals from at least one different electronics module to at least one other different electronics module or to the base station (50).

3. The wireless MR coil according to any one of claims 1-2, wherein the configurable mesh network (60) is configurable at least in that the electronics module (24) is configurable to disable coil elements (22) not coupled to an MR imaging field of view (FOV) (64).

4. The wireless MR coil according to any one of claims 1-3, wherein the configurable mesh network (60) is configurable to minimize the total power to wirelessly transmit the MR signals received by the electronics module (24) to the base station (50).

5. The wireless MR coil according to any one of claims 1-4, wherein the configurable mesh network (60) is configurable to maximize a minimum signal strength of any wireless communication link of the configurable mesh network.

6. The wireless MR coil according to any one of claims 1-5, wherein the electronics module (24) forms the configurable mesh network (60) from wireless mesh configuration signals received from the base station (50).

7. The wireless MR coil according to any one of claims 1-6, wherein the digital processor (32) of the electronics module (24) includes a microprocessor, microcontroller, Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA), or a combination thereof.

8. The wireless MR coil according to any one of claims 1-7, wherein each electronics module (24) is operatively connected to receive MR signals from no more than four coil elements (22).

9. A wireless Magnetic Resonance (MR) signal receiving system, comprising:

a wireless MR coil (20) including a coil element (22) tuned to receive MR signals and electronics modules (24) each including a transceiver (30) and a digital processor (32), wherein each electronics module is operatively connected to receive MR signals from at least one coil element; and

a base station (50) comprising: a base station transceiver (52) configured to wirelessly communicate with the transceiver of the electronics module of the wireless MR coil; and a base station digital processor (54);

wherein the electronic modules form a configurable mesh network (60) to wirelessly transmit the MR signals received by the electronic modules to the base station; and is

The base station digital processor is programmed to operate the base station transceiver to receive the MR signals wirelessly transmitted by the configurable mesh network to the base stations.

10. The wireless MR signal receiving system according to claim 9,

the base station digital processor (54) is further programmed to map an MR imaging field of view (FOV) (64) to a set of coil elements of the wireless MR coil (20), and to operate the base station transceiver (52) to send wireless mesh configuration signals to the electronics module (24) identifying the wireless MR coils of the set of coil elements;

wherein the configurable mesh network (60) of wireless MR coils is configurable at least in that the electronics module is configurable to disable coil elements not included in the set of coil elements identified by the wireless mesh configuration signal.

11. The wireless MR signal reception system according to any one of claims 9-10, wherein the base station digital processor (54) is further programmed to perform a mesh configuration operation including:

polling the electronics module (24) of the wireless MR coil (20) using the base station transceiver (52);

optimizing a mesh configuration of the configurable mesh network (60) in relation to at least one operational metric of the wireless MR coil to generate an optimized mesh configuration, wherein the operational metric of the wireless MR coil is calculated using information determined from the polling; and is

Sending control signals to control the electronics module (24) of the wireless MR coil to form the configurable mesh network according to the optimized mesh configuration.

12. The wireless MR signal receiving system of claim 11 wherein the optimization of the mesh configuration comprises:

optimizing the mesh structure to minimize operating power consumed by the wireless MR coil (20) calculated using a power consumption value for the electronics module (24) determined from the polling.

13. The wireless MR signal receiving system of claim 11 wherein the optimization of the mesh configuration comprises:

optimizing the mesh configuration to maximize a minimum signal strength of any wireless communication link of the configurable mesh network (60) calculated using signal strength values between pairs of electronic modules (24) determined from the polling.

14. The wireless MR signal receiving system according to any one of claims 9-13, wherein the transceiver (30) of the electronic module (24) and the base transceiver station (52) of the base station (50) wirelessly intercommunicate using Time Domain Multiplexing (TDM) or Frequency Domain Multiplexing (FDM).

15. The wireless MR signal receiving system according to any one of claims 9-14, wherein the configurable mesh network (60) is configurable, at least in that each electronics module (24) of the wireless MR coil (20) can be configured to relay MR signals from a different electronics module to another different electronics module or to the base station (50).

16. The wireless MR signal receiving system according to any one of claims 9-15, wherein the wireless MR coil (20) includes a first wireless MR coil (20) having MR coil elements on a first substrate (26) and a second wireless MR coil (21) having MR coil elements on a second substrate (27).

17. A wireless Magnetic Resonance (MR) signal receiving method, comprising:

receiving MR signals from a coil element (22) of a wireless MR coil (20) at an electronics module (24) of the wireless MR coil; and is

Operating a transceiver (30) of the electronics module of the wireless MR coil as a configurable mesh network (60) to wirelessly transmit the MR signals received by the electronics module to a base station (50).

18. The wireless MR signal receiving method according to claim 17, further comprising:

mapping, at the base station (50), an MR imaging field of view (FOV) (64) to a set of coil elements of the wireless MR coil (20);

wirelessly transmitting a wireless mesh configuration signal identifying the set of coil elements from the base station to the electronics module (24) of the wireless MR coil; and is

Disabling coil elements not included in the set of coil elements identified by the wireless mesh configuration signal through operation of the electronics module.

19. The method of receiving wireless MR signals according to any one of claims 17 to 18, further comprising:

polling the electronic module (24) of the wireless MR coil (20) using a base transceiver station (52) of the base station (50);

optimizing, at the base station, a mesh configuration of the configurable mesh network (60) in relation to at least one operational metric of the wireless MR coils to generate an optimized mesh configuration, wherein the operational metric of the wireless MR coils is calculated using information determined from the polling;

using the base station transceiver (52), sending control signals to control the electronics modules of the wireless MR coils to form the configurable mesh network according to the optimized mesh configuration.

20. The wireless MR signal receiving method according to claim 19, wherein the optimization of the mesh configuration comprises:

optimizing the mesh structure to minimize operating power consumed by the wireless MR coil (20) calculated using a power consumption value for the electronics module (24) determined from the polling.

21. The wireless MR signal receiving method according to claim 19, wherein the optimization of the mesh configuration comprises:

optimizing the mesh configuration to maximize a minimum signal strength of any wireless communication link of the configurable mesh network (60) calculated using signal strength values between pairs of electronic modules (24) determined from polling.

22. The wireless MR signal receiving method according to any one of claims 17-21, wherein the transceiver (30) of the electronics module (24) of the wireless MR coil (20) is operated to form the configurable mesh network (60) using Time Domain Multiplexing (TDM) or Frequency Domain Multiplexing (FDM) to wirelessly transmit the MR signals received by the electronics module to the base station (50).

Technical Field

The following generally relates to Magnetic Resonance (MR) imaging techniques, wireless MR receive coil techniques, MR signal processing techniques, and related techniques.

Background

Coils consisting of multiple coil elements are becoming more common because such coil arrays may provide parallel imaging data acquisition and, thus, faster data acquisition and/or higher image resolution and/or higher SNR (signal to noise ratio). An MR receive coil with multiple coil elements can be acquired in parallel with many channels, e.g., one for each coil element. In one illustrative example, the coil may include 48 coil elements and 48 MR signal receive channels. After acquisition and compression, the digital data content produced by each channel is approximately 20Mb/s, and 960Mb/s for the illustrative 48-channel coil.

Large bandwidth payloads can be handled by using separate coaxial cables to carry each channel, but this results in an awkward cable bundle. In a known improvement, a single electronics module may include preamplifiers for two coil elements and time or frequency domain multiplexing (TDM or FDM), thereby halving the number of coaxial cables, but the number of cables is still large.

Another difficulty is that the cables may become electrically coupled to MR magnetic field gradients or other RF couplings. Replacing the coaxial cable with a fiber optic connection can reduce this problem, but a large number of connections (galvanic or fiber optic) remain a problem.

Yet another difficulty is the need to limit power consumption. MR-compliant products must meet stringent heat dissipation requirements in order to avoid the risk of burning for patients who may come into contact with the product. Thus, the MR coil should not produce unacceptable levels of heating.

Certain improvements are disclosed below.

Disclosure of Invention

In some embodiments disclosed herein, a wireless Magnetic Resonance (MR) coil comprises: a coil element tuned to receive MR signals; and electronic modules, each electronic module including a transceiver and a digital processor. Each electronics module is operatively connected to receive MR signals from at least one coil element. The electronics modules form a configurable mesh network to wirelessly transmit MR signals received by the electronics modules to a base station.

In some embodiments disclosed herein, a wireless MR signal receiving system includes a wireless MR coil and a base station. The wireless MR coil includes a coil element tuned to receive MR signals and electronics modules, each electronics module including a transceiver and a digital processor. Each electronics module is operatively connected to receive MR signals from at least one coil element. The base station includes: a base station transceiver configured to wirelessly communicate with the transceiver of the electronics module of the wireless MR coil; and a base station digital processor. The electronics modules form a configurable mesh network to wirelessly transmit MR signals received by the electronics modules to the base station. The base station digital processor is programmed to operate the base station transceiver to receive the MR signals wirelessly transmitted by a configurable mesh network to the base stations.

In some embodiments disclosed herein, a wireless MR signal receiving method includes: receiving, at an electronics module of a wireless MR coil, MR signals from a coil element of the wireless MR coil; and operating the transceiver of the electronics module of the wireless MR coil as a configurable mesh network to wirelessly transmit the MR signals received by the electronics module to a base station.

One advantage resides in a wireless MR coil that can be configured to provide optimally reduced power consumption.

Another advantage resides in a wireless MR coil that can be configured to provide optimally reduced heat generation and thus improved patient safety.

Another advantage resides in a wireless MR coil with improved reliability.

Another advantage resides in wireless MR coils that can be configured to provide optimized image quality.

Another advantage resides in a wireless MR coil having improved robustness against failure of one or several electronic modules of the wireless MR coil.

Another advantage resides in wireless MR coils that can be configured to provide dynamic matching of a working coil element to an MR imaging field of view (FOV).

A given embodiment may provide none, one, two, more, or all of the foregoing advantages, and/or may provide other advantages that will become apparent to those skilled in the art upon reading and understanding the present disclosure.

Drawings

The invention may take form in various components and arrangements of components, and in various steps and arrangements of steps. The drawings are only for purposes of illustrating the preferred embodiments and are not to be construed as limiting the invention.

Figure 1 diagrammatically illustrates a Magnetic Resonance (MR) imaging device including a wireless MR receive coil and an associated RF coil base station.

Fig. 2 diagrammatically illustrates a plan view of the wireless MR receive coil of fig. 1 with an illustrative FOV indicated and communication links between the electronic modules of the wireless MR receive coil operating in a suitable grid configuration.

Fig. 3 diagrammatically illustrates an enlarged plan view of one quarter of the wireless MR receive coil of fig. 1.

Fig. 4 diagrammatically illustrates a grid configuration method suitably performed by the wireless MR receive coil and/or RF coil base station of fig. 1.

Detailed Description

Referring to fig. 1, an illustrative medical imaging apparatus 10 includes a Magnetic Resonance (MR) imaging scanner, which in an illustrative example includes a housing or gantry 12, the housing or gantry 12 containing various components not shown in fig. 1, such as by way of non-limiting illustrative example, a superconducting or normally conductive magnet, which generates a static state (B)₀) Magnetic field, magnetic field gradient coil for superimposing magnetic field gradients on B₀Magnetic field gradients in the magnetic field, whole-body Radio Frequency (RF) coils for applying RF pulses for excitation and/orSpatially encode magnetic resonance in an imaging subject located in the MR bore 14 or other MR examination region, and so forth. A robotic patient couch 16 or other subject support is capable of loading a medical patient, subject under medical examination, or other imaging subject into the MR bore 14 for imaging.

With continuing reference to fig. 1 and with further reference to fig. 2 and 3, a wireless MR coil 20 is provided for receiving MR signals generated by operation of the MR imaging scanner 10 fig. 2 shows a plan view of the entire illustrative wireless MR coil 20, while fig. 3 shows an enlarged view of one quarter of the illustrative wireless MR coil 20 as best seen in fig. 2 and 3, the wireless MR coil 20 includes coil elements 22 tuned to receive MR signals, and an electronics module 24 operatively connected to receive MR signals from the coil elements 22 the illustrative wireless MR coil 20 includes 48 coil elements 22 arranged in an array of 6 ×, however, it should be understood that this arrangement is merely an exemplary example and that more or less than 48 coil elements may be used in various arrangements, e.g., by way of some further non-limiting illustrative example, the wireless MR coil may include a one-dimensional arrangement (i.e., a linear array) of 4, 8, 12 or more coil elements, or a one-dimensional arrangement (i.e., N-M-coil elements may be disposed in a regular N-coil array on a front coil base plate, or a back coil base plate, and a base plate.

The coil elements 22 are tuned to receive MR signals generated by precessing isotopes excited by RF pulses generated by the MR imaging apparatus 10. The MR signal being at or near the MR frequency f_MRByGiven therein, B₀Is the static magnetic field generated by the main magnet of the MR imaging device 10 and gamma is the gyro ratio of the isotope generating the MR signal. For example¹The H isotope has a gamma of 42.58MHz/T, and¹⁹the coil loop is formed to have a resonant frequency F by tuning the coil to the frequency of the MR signal by any suitable technique, such as by adjusting the capacitance C of a tuning capacitor in the coil loop having an inductance L_res＝f_MRThe resonant L C loop of (a), wherein,these are merely illustrative examples.

With particular reference to fig. 2 and 3 and with further reference to inset a of fig. 1, each electronics module 24 includes a transceiver 30 and a digital processor 32, and each electronics module 24 is operatively connected to receive MR signals from at least one coil element. In the illustrative example, each illustrative electronics module 24 is operatively connected to receive MR signals from two coil elements 22, as best seen in fig. 2 and 3 and as inset a shown diagrammatically in fig. 1. Non-limiting illustrative operative connections of the two coil elements 22 with the electronic coil module 24 are shown in inset a of fig. 1 and include a preamplifier 40 that confines the amplified analog MR signals and an analog-to-digital (a/D) converter 42 that converts the amplified MR signals to digital MR signals that are input to the digital processor 32. In general, the number of coil elements operatively coupled to a single electronics module may be one, two (as shown), three, four, or more; however, in some embodiments, to avoid unnecessary wiring complexity and undesirably long connection lengths from the coil to the preamplifier, the number of coil elements operatively coupled with a single electronics module preferably does not exceed four coil elements. The digital processor 32 may be any suitable programmable digital device or element — for example, the digital processor 32 may be a microprocessor, microcontroller, Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA), or a combination thereof.

The wireless MR coil 20 is a wireless coil that wirelessly transmits MR signals received by the coil element 22 from the coil 20 using the transceiver 30 of the electronics module 24. Further, it is contemplated that the electronics module 24 is powered by energy harvesting (e.g., RF and/or magnetic fields generated from the MR scanner 10) and/or by on-board rechargeable batteries (not shown) to eliminate all wired connections to the system. As such, in some embodiments (including the illustrative embodiments), the wireless MR coil 20 does not include any coaxial cable. In some embodiments (including the illustrative embodiments), the wireless MR coil 20 does not include any optical fiber. In some embodiments (including the illustrative embodiments), the wireless MR coil 20 does not include any coaxial cable and does not include any optical fiber. Alternatively, the wireless MR coil may include a coaxial cable for receiving power, and/or a fiber optic connection for conveying a direct current signal to detune the coil element 22 during an RF transmit phase of an MR imaging sequence performed by the MR scanner 10 or for other purposes other than transmitting MR signals received by the coil element out of the coil. The transceiver 30 of the electronics module 24 uses any suitable low-power, short-range wireless communication protocol (e.g., the internet protocol)ANT^TMWiFi, Bluetooth^TMEtc.) to communicate.

With particular reference to fig. 1 and 2, the base station 50 includes a base station transceiver 52 and a base station digital processor 54 (e.g., a microprocessor, microcontroller, FPGA, or combination thereof, etc.) programmed to operate the base station transceiver 52 to receive MR signals wirelessly transmitted to the base station 50 by a configurable mesh network (to be described) formed by the electronics module 24 of the wireless MR coil 20. To facilitate operable communication with the wireless MR coil 20, the base station 50 may include a non-volatile memory (e.g., flash memory) that stores a coil data table 56, the coil data table 56 having information such as the number of MR receive channels (which may correspond in some embodiments to the number of coil elements 22, e.g., 48 channels in the illustrative example), the wireless network ID of the electronics module 24 of the wireless MR coil 20 (e.g., hard coded or obtained by polling the electronics module 24 according to a selected wireless communication protocol), and may also store information about the physical layout of the coil elements 22 in order to map the coil elements to a particular MR imaging field of view (FOV).

The base station 50 receives the wireless MR signals wirelessly transmitted from the coil 20 using the transceiver 30 of the electronics module 24. As schematically shown in fig. 2, in order to perform this transmission in an efficient and configurable manner, the electronics modules 24 of the wireless MR coil 20 form a configurable mesh network to wirelessly transmit MR signals received by the electronics modules 24 to the base station 50. In fig. 2, dashed arrows indicate pairs of links between electronic modules 24 to graphically illustrate configurable mesh network 60. The configurable mesh network 60 is configurable, at least in that each electronics module 24 is programmable, to relay MR signals from at least one different electronics module 24 to at least one other different electronics module or to the base station 50. In the schematic inset a of fig. 1, programming of the exemplary electronics module 24 is accomplished by way of a link table 62, the link table 62 storing the identification of other electronics modules for which the illustrative electronics module 24 acts as an MR signal relay. In the case of temporary pairing, e.g. using bluetooth^TMThe protocol is such that the protocol is,pairing keys and the like may be stored in the link table 62. The link table 62 may be stored, for example, in flash memory or other non-volatile memory storage, or in RAM or other volatile memory. In some embodiments, wireless communication may employ Frequency Domain Multiplexing (FDM), Time Domain Multiplexing (TDM), orthogonal coding, or another method to stagger transmissions between electronic modules 24 and base station 50 in frequency space, time, or orthogonality through transmitted signals.

The configuration of the configurable mesh network 60 requires defining which electronic modules act as relays for other electronic modules, and which electronic module(s) transmit MR signal data to the base station 50 the configurable mesh network may be configured to achieve various objectives during an imaging sequence, such as to minimize total power to wirelessly transmit MR signals received by the electronic modules 24 to the base station 50 (and thereby minimize thermal heating introduced by the wireless MR coils 20 and thus improve patient comfort and safety), maximize minimum signal strength of any wireless communication links of the configurable mesh network (thereby enhancing reliability), etc. in one approach, the base station 50 acts as a central coordinator for configuring the configurable mesh network 60. to this end, in one illustrative approach, the base station digital processor 54 is further programmed to perform mesh configuration operations including polling the electronic modules 24 of the wireless MR coils 22 using the base station transceiver 52, optimizing the mesh configuration of the configurable mesh network 60 corresponding to at least one operational metric of the wireless MR coils to generate an optimized mesh configuration (where the operational metric of the wireless MR coils 20 is calculated using information determined from the polling), and controlling the transmission of MR signals to form the optimized mesh network operation if the optimal mesh network is selected optimal mesh network 20, the optimal mesh network is based on the desired electrical metric, e.g., the optimal mesh network 25, the optimal mesh network may be a wireless MR network, the optimal mesh network, the optimal_i∈{M}P_iOrOr a similar metric to be minimized, where M is the collection of electronic modules 24,m is the number of electronic modules 24, and P_iIs the power consumption (P) of the electronic module for the test grid configuration indexed by i_iMay be determined empirically by performing test communications using a test grid configuration, or calculated based on polled "per channel" power consumption and the number of module-module or module-base station channel pairs supported by module i in the test grid configuration). As another example, if the desired optimization is to maximize the minimum signal strength of any wireless communication link of the configurable mesh network, the operational metric may be min (S)₁,S₂,…,S_L) Or similar criteria to be maximized, where S_lSee, for example, Eslami et al, "A Survey on Wireless Networks," Architecture, Specifications and Challenges ", 2014 IEEE 5th Control and System GraduateResearch colloid, 8 months 11-12 days, UiTM, Shah Alam, Malaysia, pp 219-222 (2014.) the Control signal used to Control the electronic module 24 of the Wireless MR coil 20 to form a configurable Mesh network consistent with an optimizable Mesh configuration may be, for example, a pair of identifier sequences identifying module-module and module-base station pairings to be established to achieve the optimized Mesh configuration.

Another optional aspect of the configuration of the configurable mesh network 60 is the selection of operating coil elements. For example, the configurable mesh network 60 may be configurable, at least in that the electronics module 24 may be configured to disable coil elements 22 that are not coupled to the MR imaging field of view (FOV)64 (see fig. 2). In some cases, the MR imaging FOV may be smaller than the area covered by the coil elements 22, such that some coil elements are not (well) coupled with the MR imaging FOV 64. To address this issue, the base station digital processor 54 may be further programmed to map the MR imaging FOV (e.g., received from the MR imaging device 10 when the MR imaging device 10 is set to perform a particular imaging sequence) to the set of coil elements of the wireless MR coil 20 and operate the base station transceiver 52 to send wireless mesh configuration signals to the electronics module 24 of the wireless MR coil 20 to identify the set of coil elements. The mapped coil elements are those that are (well) coupled to the MR imaging FOV. The configurable mesh network 60 of wireless MR coils 20 is then configured with respect to the FOV by the electronics module 24, which electronics module 24 disables those of the coil elements 22 not included in the set of coil elements coupled to the FOV by the wireless mesh configuration signal.

Illustratively, the configurable mesh network 60 shown in FIG. 2 is configured such that only the 4 × 4 array of coil elements is active (all other coil elements are disabled by the operatively connected electronics module 24 as part of the mesh configuration) within the indicated MR imaging FOV 64. furthermore, the four leftmost electronics modules 24 of the 4 × 4 array are paired with the four modules adjacent to the right, and so on, with the four rightmost electronics modules of the 4 × 4 array being paired with the base station 50 to transmit MR signals to the base station 50₁,S₂,…,S_L)). This is merely an illustrative example, and different mesh configurations may be achieved by optimization for different operational metrics or different arrangements of the wireless MR receive coils 20 (e.g., if the base station is located "above" the coils in fig. 2, then the relay link would preferably extend from the bottommost electronics module to the topmost electronics module, and finally to the base station). More generally, the disclosed methods facilitate scalability of imaging regions for applications such as whole-body imaging. The disclosed mesh network MR coil design approach supports fast scalability of the imaging region for multi-coil applications, and all coil elements used in the scan need not reside in a single physical MR coil. The mesh network may be made of MR receive elements in a plurality of MR coils. This is an advantage of the disclosed grid method for MR coil design, i.e. the MR receive coil elements can be located in different MR coils of the overall system and dynamically configured in a given gridAnd (4) combining. This facilitates extension of coil development to non-anatomical coil designs in that one MR coil can support multiple imaging protocols, as long as the coil can receive MR signals sufficient to facilitate diagnostic images.

Referring to fig. 4, an illustrative operation of the wireless MR coil 20 and the base station 50 is shown. In operation 100, the base station 50 receives an MR imaging FOV. In an operation 102 performed by the base station digital processor 54, the MR imaging FOV is mapped to coil elements that are (well) coupled to the FOV. In operation 104, the base station digital processor 54 operates the base station transceiver 52 to poll the electronics module 24 (or, in a variant embodiment, only those modules that control coil elements coupled with the MR imaging FOV) to determine information for optimizing the mesh configuration, such as module-to-module and module-to-base station pairing signal strengths, power consumption of each module, and the like. In operation 106, the base station digital processor 54 optimizes a mesh configuration corresponding to at least one operational metric of the wireless MR coil to generate an optimized mesh configuration. Optionally, the optimization may only require those electronics modules that are operatively coupled with the coil elements for imaging the MR imaging FOV. In operation 108, an optimized mesh configuration signal (or a control signal for implementing the optimized mesh configuration) is broadcast from the base station transceiver 52 to the transceiver 30 of the electronic module 24. (alternatively, the current mesh network of electronic modules may be used to relay this information to the module to perform operation 108).

In operation 110, the mesh configuration signals are received at the electronics module 24 (or at those modules where the control coil elements are not disabled by not being coupled with the FOV), and in operation 112, the electronics module 24 forms an optimized mesh network (i.e., module-to-module link and module-to-base station link to achieve the optimized mesh network) by establishing a wireless communication link. In a subsequent ongoing operation 114, the electronics module wirelessly transmits the received MR signals to the base station 50 using the implemented optimized mesh network.

As the ongoing MR signal offloading operation 114 continues, in an optional diagnostic operation 116, the electronics module 24 and/or the base station 50 may monitor the signal strength, module power consumption, or other operating parameters of the wireless MR coil 20, and if a problem is detected (e.g., a link with a signal strength that is unacceptably low, the electronics module overheating, etc.), the mesh network may be reconfigured to mitigate the detected problem (e.g., by rerouting the mesh network to eliminate the link with a low signal strength, or by rerouting some mesh network traffic away from the overheated electronics module, etc.).

In the illustrative example of fig. 4, the optimized grid configuration is determined by the base station 50 at operations 102, 106, since the advantageous methods of the base station 50 may generally have greater data processing capabilities, and/or multiple operating powers. However, in other contemplated embodiments, electronics module 24 may determine or adjust the grid configuration based on local signal strength measurements, individual module power consumption values, or the like.

The invention has been described with reference to the preferred embodiments. Modifications and alterations will occur to others upon reading and understanding the preceding detailed description. It is intended that the disclosure be construed as including all such modifications and alterations insofar as they come within the scope of the appended claims or the equivalents thereof.