CHAPTER 7: The MR Receiver Chain

The receiver chain takes the MR voltages induced in the RF receiver coil as an input and ultimately produces an output of fully digital data that represents the information content of the MR signal. The chain must be carefully designed to amplify the very small MR signal as accurately as possible and to achieve the maximum SNR of the digitized signal. The basic design of the chain is outlined in terms of the dynamic range and noise figure of each component. Design criteria for the transmit/receive switch, preamplifier, frequency conversion and sampling, and analogue-to-digital converter are summarised. Finally, recent advances in optical and wireless signal transmission are discussed.