Introduction

Magnetic resonance imaging at 7 Tesla provides a considerable improvement in SNR. On top of that, various functional imaging techniques that reveal physiologic information on the tissue can be obtained with increased contrast [1–5]. However, these improvements have only been reported for the brain. Exploiting these advantages for deeply located structures (e.g. prostate) is challenging due the RF related problems. Therefore, combined with the limited market for 7 Tesla scanners, a commercially available RF coil for body imaging at 7 Tesla is not available. The goal of this project has been to design and build an RF coil for prostate imaging at 7 Tesla, that can deal with the challenges that come with the higher frequency of the signals: 1. The reduced wavelength causes interference patterns 2. the increased frequency comes with a reduced penetration depth and 3. higher frequencies result in higher SAR levels, causing more local heating of tissue.