Actively-Shielded Superconducting Magnet Design of a Large-Bore 7 T Animal MRI Scanner

As a very useful imaging tool in preclinical research, the high-field animal magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is capable of acquiring high-resolution anatomical/structural image and also accurate functional information. A 400 mm large-bore superconducting magnet for animal MRI was designed in this work. The design adopted a supplementing field strategy with preset primary coils. The compensating and shielding coils were optimized simultaneously to achieve a homogeneous imaging space and confine the stray field to a designated extent. A three-step optimization procedure was used to configure the magnet coils with accurate winding information. Detailed coil parameter evaluation shows that the designed magnet coils have engineeringly acceptable electromagnetic and mechanical performance.