1. Field of the Invention
The present invention concerns a magnetic resonance radio-frequency (RF) coil assembly that is designed for obtaining magnetic resonance data for imaging the cervical region.
2. Description of the Prior Art
A ring applicator for cervical brachytherapy procedures monitored by computed tomography or magnetic resonance imaging is commercially available from Nucletron (Utrecht, Netherlands). This applicator is shown in FIG. 1 and is formed by a loop and a tandem applicator. The loop applicator is configured to be located extracorporeally adjacent to the cervix, and the tandem applicator proceeds through the interior of the loop, and is placed into the cervix in a pre-treatment procedure. The tandem applicator is aligned so as to be perpendicular to the planar surface defined by the loop.
The brachytherapy procedure that is implemented using this known applicator can be monitored, as noted above, by computed tomography or by magnetic resonance imaging. In the case of monitoring by magnetic resonance imaging, conventionally designed, general purpose local coils, or if appropriate a whole-body coil, are used for RF transmission and/or reception, in order to generate and acquire the magnetic resonance data in an appropriate imaging sequence. Because these RF coils are among the conventional coils that are available for a number of different imaging purposes, they do not have a specific design for cervical imaging, and must be placed on or around the body of the patient at manually selected locations, according to the judgment and experience of the technician or physician responsible for implementing the procedure. Because these conventional coils do not conform to the anatomy of the cervical region, the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of the transmitted and/or received signals may suffer due to compromises that must be made in the placement of such coils relative to the cervix. A sub-optimum SNR results in an image of sub-optimum clarity for diagnostic purposes.