The elative performance of high temperature superconductors in receiver coils for MR

The authors´ initial experiments replacing conventional copper with high temperature superconductor (HTS) have been encouraging-with both materials the Q of the cryo-cooled coils has been very high and with some varieties of HTS the Q was spectacular but the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) contradictorily inferior to the copper mimic. Furthermore the Q of these HTS coils tended to fall as they were introduced into higher magnetic fields; this effect was reversible whereas other forms of deterioration were not. Continuing studies are directed at optimising the design and fabrication of the receiver coil into an integrated system design