Feasibility Study of a No-Insulation 1.5-T/600-mm All-REBCO Magnet for MRI Systems

Abstract

This paper presents the design of a 1.5-T/600-mm all-REBCO magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) magnet comprising a stack of 118 no-insulation (NI) double-pancake coils. A 4.1-mm-wide and 0.1-mm-thick REBCO tape was used in this study. The preshim overall field homogeneity within a 50-cm diameter of spherical volume was estimated to be <25 ppm. According to the equivalent-circuit model of the NI magnet, the basic magnet performance was demonstrated analytically. The design results of the 1.5-T/600-mm all-REBCO MRI magnet with the NI technology indicate the possibility that the NI winding technology can be used in all-REBCO NI magnets for MRI systems. Consequently, the combination of the REBCO tape and the NI winding technique is expected to enable the development of 1.5-T MRI magnets that offer LHe-free operation and are self-protecting, highly compact, and mechanically robust.