A Low-cost Multichannel Spectrometer for Magnetic Resonance Imaging

Weinan Tang, Weimin Wang Institute of Quantum Electronics, School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science, Peking University, Beijing, Peoples Republic of China E-mail: wmwang@ele.pku.edu.cn
Abstract: A low-cost multichannel spectrometer is proposed for magnetic resonance imaging. There are three distinct features of the instrument: (1) the scalable parallel acquisition with extension to 16 channels is achieved upon high-speed, wideband digital downconverters (DDCs). (2) high frequency range up to 400MHz is allowed by using two quadrature digital upconverters (QDUCs) as a radio-frequency (RF) source and a local oscillator, respectively. (3) the design is based on a system on chip (SOC) integration with PowerPC architecture. Besides, by combining field programmable gate array (FPGA) and digital signal processor (DSP) technique, the spectrometer is built in a digital manner with high performance and accuracy. The device consists of inexpensive and highly-integrated components which make it low-cost and compact. The spectrometer has been successfully designed and demonstrated by the experimental result. Keywords: magnetic resonance imaging, multichannel spectrometer, parallel data acquisition

specialized RF synthesizers [7,10]. The FPGA and DSP make the receiver more flexible and integrated [11,12]. In this work, we present a new spectrometer with up to 16 acquisition channels and high frequency range (<400MHz). The spectrometer is constructed using low-cost, off-the-shelf components such as digital downconverters and quadrature digital upconverters. By using an embedded system based on an inexpensive PowerPC chip, the spectrometer is capable of communicating with a personal computer (PC) through high speed Ethernet. Compare to previous PC-based designs [8,9,13], this architecture allows the spectrometer to be independent from a PC, therefore making it well-suited as a portable apparatus for use in a research lab as well as clinical field. The device has a cost of approximate $400 per channel (compared with $12500 per channel for a commercial one). The details of the instrument implementation and results are discussed in the following. II. METHODOLOGY

I.

INTRODUCTION

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is the most important of diagnostic imaging modalities, providing highly contrasted images of the body tissue with features of exquisite spatial resolution and oblique imaging. As a non-invasive and nonionizing imaging method, MRI has found numerous applications in the clinical field, such as functional imaging, tumor detection, and angiography [1-3]. The design of a spectrometer is critical to the development of an MRI system. As an electronic console, the spectrometer is mainly responsible for running pulse sequences, transmitting and receiving RF signals, and controlling the generation of gradient waveforms. In general, the key revolutions in developing a modern MRI spectrometer are widespread shift to higher field imaging and further increases in the number of channels [4]. In addition, the cost, size, and complexity of a spectrometer are also considerable factors in the design. Many standard commercial spectrometers, such as Bruker and Varian, deliver state-of-the-art performance. However, these systems are generally rather complex and expensive due to the use of highly dedicated subsystems, for example, the Programmed Test Sources (PTS) and distributed pulse programmers. With the development in the technique of electronics and computer science, a number of groups are working to design varies MRI spectrometers aiming at low-cost, small size and simplicity [5-9]. Inexpensive direct digital synthesizer (DDS) chips are often used to replace highly

The block diagram of the presented spectrometer is shown in Fig. 1. It mainly consists of five modules constructed on plug-in circuit boards, system controller, pulse programmer, RF transmitter, gradient generator, and receiver. The system controller provides access route between a PC and the spectrometer. As a core of the controller, a PowerPC-based 32bit RISC processor (PPC-405EP, AMCC) is employed for network communication and data transfer. This PowerPC processor is actually an on-chip computer that uses Linux as the operating system. It supports speeds of up to 266MHz and incorporates two Ethernet MACs, a PCI interface, an SDRAM controller, and other peripherals. One CPLD along with a dualport RAM is used to connect the processor with the pulse programmer. The processor also interfaces with the digital receiver to upload k-space data for image reconstruction. The pulse programmer is implemented in a digital signal processor (TMS320C6413, TI). As a member of TIs C6000 family, the chip can process information at a rate of 500MHz, which improves the sequence timing resolution as high as 2ns. The DSP core possesses two register files with eight independent functional units that extend the parallelism of the pulse sequence operation. This concurrency is very helpful when the simultaneous control of different hardware modules is required. Before running the sequence, the data file of digital waveforms and compiled pulse sequences are first sent to the PowerPC processor, then transferred and stored in a static RAM (SRAM).

978-1-4244-5089-3/11/$26.00 2011 IEEE

achievable due to the DDS technique. The AD9957 can support a system clock and DAC sampling rate of up to 1GHz, therefore allowing for RF transmission approaching 400MHz. We use another AD9957 as a single tone DDS in the mixing stage of the receiver. The NMR signals from multichannel coils are first amplified by the preamplifier and then down mixed to intermediate frequency (IF) signals. The 14-bit ADCs (AD9251, Analog Device) directly acquire the IF signals at a sampling rate of 50MHz. Then the digital data is quadrature demodulated and filtered by parallel DDCs (AD6636, Analog Device). The AD6636 has 4 independent processing channels for real inputs. So four AD6636 chips are used to build a digital receiver with up to 16 channels. After oversampling, the subsequent processing decimates the data into a lower rate to gain higher signal-to-noise rate (SNR). The filter chain of AD6636 provides programmable decimation rate with range from 1 to 32768, which leads to a minimum receiver bandwidth of 1.53KHz. Since NMR signal occupies a narrow spread of frequencies of 5KHz to 500KHz, this decimation range is enough for most magnetic resonance applications. Considering the tradeoff between signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and spatial resolution, we define the passband of overall filter response as 30% of the receiver bandwidth and stopband attenuation as 100dB. Fig. 2 shows an overall filter response with a receiver bandwidth of 27.778KHz. Once the signal for data acquisition is triggered, the state machine inside the FPGA stores the processed data into its embedded DPRAM in a time domain multiplexing (TDM) fashion. The data is written into one-half of the RAM and read out by the PowerPC processor from the other half. This double buffering is realized by ping-ponging mode between the memory halves. The PowerPC processor performs data accumulation and combines data from more than one channel into a single data stream. A larger buffer memory (SDRAM) is used for temporary storage
(a)

Figure 1. Block Diagram of the multi-channel MRI spectrometer

Later, the DSP fetches the file, distributes the digital waveforms, and initiates the hardware within other modules. The interconnection design becomes simple since external memory interface (EMIF) of the DSP provides a glueless interface to a variety of memory and peripheral types; including SRAM, DPRAM, and FLASH as well as FPGA and ASIC devices. A quadrature digital upconverter (QDUC) chip (AD9957, Analog Devices) is used as a digital modulator that shifts the frequency of the baseband spectrum up to the desired resonance frequency fr. The QDUC takes in the digital baseband I and Q data, which is amplitude modulated if soft pulse is needed. The baseband data, at an I/Q sample rate of fIQ, is generated from an FPGA (XC3S2000, Xilinx) using a direct digital synthesis method. The algorithm of digital quadrature modulation is described according to Eq. (1)-(3), as listed below. RF pulse is a narrow band modulation signal with carrier frequency equal to resonance frequency:
f r = 2 ( B0 + zG z ) = f LO + f IQ

(1)

where is the gyromagnetic ratio, B0 is the magnitude of the magnetic field, z is slice location, Gz is gradient magnetic field along the slice direction, and f LO is the frequency of a quadrature local oscillator signal in the QDUC. The baseband modulation signal can be written as:
S (n) = A(n) cos(2f IQ n + (n)) + iA(n) sin( 2f IQ n + (n))
= I ( n) + iQ (n)

(2)
(b)

where A(n) is the amplitude and (n) is the initial phase. Then the time domain output of the QDUC takes the form:
S RF (t ) = I (t ) cos(2f LO t ) Q(t ) sin( 2f LO t )

= A(t ) cos(2 ( f LO + f IQ )t + (t ))
= A(t ) cos(2f r t + (t ))

(3)

The advantage of using this direct RF architecture rather than the conventional super heterodyne approach is: (1) I and Q matching can be extremely accurate because the quadrature modulation is manipulated within the digital domain. (2) rapid switching and fine tuning resolution of frequency and phase is

Figure 2. The overall frequency response of digital filter with an output sample period of 36us. (a) The attenuation above the stopband frequency (19.45KHz) is larger than 103dB. (b) The maximum ripple in the passband is 0.007dB.

of the collected data. The data stream is then uploaded to PC for post-processing (e.g., two-dimensional Inverse Fast Fourier Transform) through 10/100 Base-T Ethernet. For MRI, gradient magnetic field is applied to perform spatial localization for imaging volume of interest. In the module of gradient generator, a single FPGA (XC3SD3400A, Xilinx) is used to calculate and generate digital gradient waveforms for oblique imaging and eddy current compensation along the X, Y, and Z directions. The outputs of compensated gradient waveforms are converted to analog signals, and then amplified by gradient amplifier to drive gradient coils. III. RESULTS

described spectrometer is compact and inexpensive, thus is well-suited in a research and teaching lab as well as clinical field.

REFERENCES
[1] Liang Z-P and Lauterbur P C, Principles of Magnetic Resonance Imaging (IEEE Press Series in Biomedical Engineering), New York: IEEE Press, 2000. [2] Vlaardingerbroek M and den Boer J A, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Berlin: Springer, 2003. [3] Haacke E M, Brown R W, Thompson M R and Venkatesan R, Magnetic Resonance Imaging: Physical Principles and Sequence Design, New York: Wiley-Liss, 1999. [4] Blamire A M, The Technology of MRI The Next 10 Years?, The British Journal of Radiology, 81 (2008), 601-617. [5] Steven M W, David G B, Jay R P, David C S, Emilio E, David C C, F. Russell Huson, A Desktop Magnetic Resonance Imaging System, Magnetic Resonance Materials in Physics, Biology and Medicine, 13 (2002), 177-185. [6] M. Rokitta, E. Rommel, U. Zimmermann, A. Haase, Portable Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Imaging System, Rev. Sci. Instrum. Vol. 71, pp. 4257-4262, November 2000. [7] S. Jie, X. Qin, L. Ying, and L. Gengying. Home-built Magnetic Resonance Imaging System (0.3T) with a complete digital spectrometer. Rev. Sci. Instrum. Vol. 76, pp. 105101-1-7, October 2005. [8] Zhengmin Liu, Cong Zhao, Heqin Zhou, and Huangqing Feng. A Novel Digital Magnetic Resonance Imaging Spectrometer. Proceedings of the 28th IEEE EMBS Annual International Conference, New York City, USA, Aug 30-Sept 3, 2006. [9] Martyn N J Paley, Eugeny Kryukov, Michael Lamperth, Ian R Young. An Independent Multichannel Imaging Research System for Ultrashort Echo Time Imaging on Clinical MR Systems. Concepts in Magnetic Resonance Part B. Vol. 35b(2) 80-88 (2009). [10] Xiao Liang and Wang Weimin. A Radio-frequency Source Using Direct Digital Synthesis and Field Programmable Gate Array for Nuclear Magnetic Resonance. Rev. Sci. Instrum. 80, 124703 (2009). [11] John C H, III, Lawrence E C, and Mitsuaki Arakawa. A Floating-Point Digital Receiver for MRI. IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering, Vol. 49, No. 7, July, 2002. [12] Ishaan L D, Ashwin L K, Fred L F. A Low-cost Scalable Multichannel Digital Receiver for Magnetic Resonance Imaging. Proceedings of the 28th IEEE EMBS Annual International Conference, New York City, USA, Aug 30-Sept 3, 2006. [13] Jerzy Bodurka, Patrick J L, Peter V G, Renxin Chu, Jacco A de Zwart, Doug Morris, and Jeff H D. Scalable Multichannel MRI Data Acquisition System. Magnetic Resonance in Medicine 51: 165-171 (2004).

The spectrometer is incorporated in a home-built 1.5T MRI system to verify its performance. Fig. 3 shows a T2-weighted image of human brain using spin echo pulse sequence. The matrix size is 256 162 and imaging plane is transversal section. The other corresponding parameters are: RF frequency = 63.89MHz, the repetition time (TR) = 3900ms, the echo delay time (TE) = 120ms, the slice thickness (THK) = 6mm, the field of view (FOV) = 184mm230mm, the number of excitations (NEX) = 2.

Figure 3. Transversal T2-weighted image of human brain at a 1.5T magnetic field.

IV.

CONCULUTIONS

A low-cost, multichannel MR spectrometer was designed and built for magnetic resonance imaging. With multiple DDCs and high frequency QDUCs, it provides abilities of parallel data acquisition and high frequency range. In addition, the application of digital quadrature modulation avoids RF spectral distortion due to amplitude and phase mismatch between I and Q channels. The spectrometer is based on PowerPC architecture, which eases the data transfer and facilitates the use of the device as a portable apparatus. In addition, the