Receive coil array for magnetic particle imaging

Magnetic particle imaging (MPI) is a quantitative method for determining the spatial distribution of superparamagnetic nanoparticles in-vivo. It applies various static and dynamic magnetic fields resulting in a spatially dependent particle magnetization characteristic, which can be recorded using receive coils. For spatial encoding, different field topologies were developed, which use either a point-based or a line-based acquisition scheme. The receive coil topology was, however, not changed since the first introduction of MPI in 2005. Therefore, the aim of this work is to investigate in a simulation study the role of the receive coils in MPI. Analogue to parallel imaging in magnetic resonance imaging, multiple receive coils are used and it is exploited, whether this allows to shorten the data acquisition time. In order to perform a realistic simulation study, a new method for modeling patient noise in MPI is proposed, which can be used even for non-orthogonal receive coils.