IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MEDICAL IMAGING, VOL. 27, NO.
12, DECEMBER 2008
Development of an Active Intravascular MR Device
With an Optical Transmission System
Stephan Fandrey*, Steffen Weiss, and Jörg Müller
Abstract—Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is a safe and reli-
able medical imaging method providing good soft tissue contrast
while avoiding harmful ionizing radiation. It is highly desirable
to use the MRI technology for interventional procedures. How-
ever, due to resonance effects that can result in tissue heating,
long conducting cables must be avoided. Motivated by the need
for more radio-frequency (RF) safety, we developed an optical
transmission system for active intravascular MRI devices. An
optical transmitter sends the MR signal via an optical fiber. A
miniature optical modulator was designed to be integrated into
a catheter tip. Furthermore, power is supplied optically to the
transmitter. This system can target new medical applications, due
to safe catheter tracking and safe intravascular imaging.
Index Terms—Catheter, intravascular imaging, magnetic reso-
nance imaging (MRI), optical power supply, optical transmission,
radio-frequency (RF) safety.
I. INTRODUCTION
T HE USE of minimally invasive procedures has expanded
in the last years. In many of these procedures, a catheter is
used to treat vascular diseases like coronary heart disease. Cur-
rently, surgeries are performed under X-ray fluoroscopy guid-
ance, which exposes the patient and the medical staff to ionizing
radiation. Investigations were made to apply minimally invasive
therapy under guidance of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).
MRI avoids ionizing radiation and has good soft tissue contrast
with the ability of high image resolution and might provide an
alternative to X-ray imaging in interventional therapy. High-res-
olution intravascular MRI can be used to obtain diagnostic in-
formation about atherosclerotic plaque in vessels by using micro
radio-frequency (RF) coils at the catheter tip [1]–[3].
Because real-time MRI is based on the frequent update of
one or more slices, unlike projection-based X-ray fluoroscopy,
Manuscript received February 7, 2008; revised April 16, 2008. Current ver-
sion published November 21, 2008. This work was supported by the German
Research Foundation (DFG) within in the context of the project “Active intravas-
cular MR-probe in micro system technology for locally high resoluted charac-
terisation of tissue based on a optical signal transmission” in collaboration with
Philips Research Europe-Hamburg and the supply of the photonic power con-
verter by JDSU.Asterisk indicates corresponding author.
*S. Fandrey is with the Hamburg University of Technology, Institute of Micro
Systems Technology, 21073 Hamburg, Germany (e-mail: stephan.fandrey@tu-
harburg.de).
J. Müller is with the Hamburg University of Technology, Institute of
Micro Systems Technology, 21073 Hamburg, Germany (e-mail: j.mueller@
tu-harburg.de).
S. Weiss is with the Philips Research Europe—Hamburg, Sector Medical
Imaging Systems, 21073 Hamburg, Germany (e-mail: steffen.weiss@philips.
com).
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TMI.2008.925079
0278-0062/$25.00 © IEEE
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1723
tracking of the catheter tip is needed. The images produced by
an MRI scanner can then be used to guide the catheter inter-
actively during surgery. Active MR devices enable very fast
and robust catheter tracking and also intravascular imaging. By
using local receiver coils at the catheter tip, high resolution and
high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) images of the surrounding local
tissue can be obtained. For active intravascular devices, a signal
transmission is needed that transmits the received MR signal
along the catheter.
Resonance effects in long conducting cables can cause tissue
heating [4], which prevents the clinical use of active devices
equipped with standard cables. A transformer-based cable has
been proposed that reduces RF heating for active devices [5]
and [6]. The transformers suppress common mode currents as-
sociated with RF heating, but they do not completely avoid such
currents and also introduce some signal loss. In this work, we
present an active MR device with optical signal transmission
and an optical power supply, in which optical fibers are used in-
stead of conducting cables. Optical fibers are inherently RF safe,
so that there is no risk of RF heating. Other optical concepts
have been presented in [7]–[10]. In [7], a coil at the catheter tip
is tracked by intravoxel dephasing caused by a photo current. In
[8] and [9], an optically tunable resonance circuit is used at the
catheter tip. By tuning and detuning the circuit via an optically
varied MNOS-capacitance, the catheter tip can be localized au-
tomatically. The method in [10] uses a Faraday effect position
sensor, which measures the local magnetic field for localization
of the catheter.
In contrast to these techniques, the potential advantages of the
concept presented here are direct high positive contrast com-
pared to a low negative contrast from a difference measure-
ment technique in [7] and direct signal transmission instead of
an inductive signal coupling depending on tip orientation in [8]
and [9]. Because of the direct signal transmission, the presented
system has the ability to carry image information and is, there-
fore, not limited to tracking as in [10].
The presented system consists of a miniature resonant re-
ceiver circuit and an optical transmitter, which transforms the
electrical signal into an optical signal. One objective of this work
was to design all catheter borne components as the transmitter
with as few miniature components as possible to allow the inte-
gration into the minimally invasive device.
II. MATERIALS AND METHODS
In this section, firstly the concept, the fabrication methods,
and the characterization of all components are described. Sec-
ondly, the methods to evaluate the complete system for MR ac-
tive tracking and MRI are described.
1724
Fig. 1. Electrical circuit of MR probe: The MR signal is received by a resonant
circuit (L1, C1) and transmitted via an optical transmitter (T1, LD) which is
powered by an optical power supply.
Fig. 2. Flexible foil-based micro-Helmholtz coils used as catheter receiver coil
on a five French catheter tube.
A. Optical MR Probe
The principle setup of the MR probe is shown schematically
in Fig. 1. The MR signal is received by a resonant circuit (L1,
C1) connected to the gate of a transistor T1. The transistor
modulates the current through a laser diode LD which emits
an optical signal modulated by the MR signal. To power the
transmitter, an optical power supply is used to avoid conducting
cables which are prone to RF induced heating.
1) Receiver Coils: Dedicated foil-based flexible micro-
Helmholtz-coils were fabricated for optimal integration into
the catheter tip (Fig. 2). The coils were structured using a
UV-LIGA process and electroplating applied to the planar
polyimide foil. Subsequently, the foil-based flexible coils were
wrapped around five French catheter tips [11]. Each coil was
tuned to the Larmor frequency by capacitor C1. The resonance
of this receive circuit was measured with and without being
connected to the optical transmitter using weak inductive cou-
pling of the micro coil to a pickup coil connected to a network
analyzer. The Q-factor was determined from the width of the
resonance according to
(1)
2) Optical Transmitter: The optical transmitter consists of a
transistor chip (J-FET 2N4393, 530 460 200 , Central
Semiconductor, Hauppauge, NY [12]) and a laser diode chip
(VCSEL ULM850, 250 250 0.15 , Ulm Photonics,
Ulm, Germany) with a very low threshold current of 1 mA,
which is coupled to an optical fiber (GIF 625, 125 , Thor-
labs, Newton, NJ). The gate of the transistor is protected from
voltages inducted by the high-power RF excitation pulse by a
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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MEDICAL IMAGING, VOL. 27, NO. 12, DECEMBER 2008
Fig. 3. (a) Optical transmitter containing the laser diode chip and the transistor
chip mounted on an Al O -SMD-substrate. (b) Schematic drawing of the op-
tical transmitter.
Fig. 4. Photovoltaic power converter PPC with a light sensitive area subdivided
into three diodes connected in series.
pair of crossed diodes, which also suppresses spin saturation
during RF excitation.
The entire transmitter was fabricated on an -SMD-sub-
strate, which was metalized and structured by lithography
(Fig. 3). For the conductors, a titanium-copper-gold layer was
deposited. The titanium improves the adhesion, the copper
serves as a highly conductive material, and the gold layer
protects the copper layer from oxidation.
3) Optical Power Supply: To avoid any long conducting ca-
bles, the power for the optical transmitter is supplied optically
by a laser diode (ADL-85501TL, Thorlabs) located outside the
catheter. The optical power is transmitted via a fiber (GIF 625,
125 , Thorlabs) to a photovoltaic power converter PPC (PPC-
3Me, 1 1 0.25 mm , JDSU, Milpitas, CA) in the optical MR
probe at the tip. The PPC has a light sensitive area with a diam-
eter of 0.8 mm and is subdivided into three diodes connected in
series to achieve a voltage sufficient for the VCSEL. For max-
imum efficiency it is essential to illuminate the three diodes
equally, because the weakest illuminated element will limit the
current. This is achieved by arranging the diodes in 120 seg-
ments (Fig. 4). Due to the space requirements the PPC with its
width of 1 mm was laid flat in the catheter tube.
A dedicated reflector was developed, to deflect the light beam
from the fiber end to the light sensitive area of the PPC (Fig. 5).
The reflector was anisotropically wet-etched into a 500
silicon substrate by KOH, which stops etching at the 111 crystal
plane leaving the reflector under an angle . The nu-
merical aperture of NA=0.275 of the fiber corresponds to an
aperture angle of
(2)
FANDREY et al.: DEVELOPMENT OF AN ACTIVE INTRAVASCULAR MR DEVICE WITH AN OPTICAL TRANSMISSION SYSTEM
Fig. 5. Reflector concept for powering the optical power supply. a) V-groove
used to align the fiber. b) Reflector area covered with a thin gold layer to maxi-
mize its reflectance. c) Illumination of light sensitive area defined by the angle
of the reflector = 54 7 : and the numerical aperture of the fiber = 15 96: .
Fig. 6. Reflector with V-groove etched in KOH; the reflecting area is covered
with a titan gold layer for high performance.
Under these constraints the distance and the height of the
fiber relative to the center of the power-device was calculated
to achieve equal illumination of the elements. The reflector was
covered with a thin gold layer to maximize its reflectance. A
V-groove etched in the same process step as the reflector was
used to align the fiber (Fig. 6). Finally, the illuminated reflector
was carefully aligned with the PPC to achieve maximal output
power and fixated in that position.
B. Optical Receiver
The optical signal from the fiber is demodulated by an op-
tical receiver outside of the catheter. The receiver (HFBR-2416,
Agilent Technologies, Santa Clara, CA) contains a PIN photo-
diode and a low noise transimpedance preamplifier with a band-
width of 125 MHz. The demodulated electrical signal is then
transmitted to the MR preamplifier. The transmission charac-
teristic of the optical transmission system was measured with a
spectrum analyzer.
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1725
TABLE I
Q-FACTOR OF MICRO COIL IN AIR AND IMMERSED INTO PHANTOM LIQUID
C. MR Phantom Measurements
Imaging and tracking experiments were performed in a 1.5-T
MR system (Achieva, Philips Medical Systems, Best, The
Netherlands). The receiving coil was placed in a bowl filled
with standard phantom liquid ( doped with 0.08%
and 0.2% NaCl) and the optical receiver was connected to the
MR preamplifier.
1) MRI Experiments: Microscopic MR images were ac-
quired with the coil axis parallel and perpendicular to the image
plane (FOV 64 mm, resolution 0.5 mm). In order to assess
the transmisson loss of the optical transmitter, images were
acquired in two modes, either using optical transmission or
using a direct electrical connection of the receive circuit (L1,
C1, crossed diodes) to the MR preamplifier. This second mode
bypassed the optical transmission and served as a benchmark.
The signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) was determined in all images.
It was calculated from the maximum signal intensity S at the
location of the receive coil and the mean noise signal of the
zero signal region in the modulus images according to [13]
(3)
2) MR Tracking Experiments: Fast projection-based tip
tracking was performed during real-time MRI. For the tracking
projections, the entire volume was excited, and frequency
encoded projections were acquired on the catheter channel for
the x, y, and z direction: From the position of the signal peak
in the projections, the 3-D-position of the tip was calculated
automatically by the MR system [14], and the imaging slice was
repositioned to show the tip. Additionally, the catheter tip was
moved manually in the bowl along a ”P”-shaped path during
continuous tracking of the tip position. All measured tracking
positions were recorded and displayed in the MR image.
III. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
A. Optical MR Probe
In this section the results of the characterization of the op-
tical MR probe components are presented and discussed. Table I
shows the measured Q-factors of the MR probe for various con-
figurations. The isolated receiver circuit (L1,C1) in air provides
a high Q of 41.5, which demonstrates the quality of the minia-
ture photolithographic coil design. In liquid, the Q-factors for
all configurations decrease due to dielectric losses in the liquid.
Tuning and matching of the receiver circuit to 50 for direct
electrical transmission leads to a drop of Q-factors by about
a factor 2 as expected, because the effective series resistances
1726
Fig. 7. MR micro-imaging acquired with the micro-Helmholtz coil: a and b
acquired with direct electrical transmission. (a) Coil axis through plane. (b) Coil
axis in plane. (c) and (d) Acquired via the optical transmission system: (c) coil
axis through plane and (d) coil axis in plane.
double. Interestingly, connecting the resonant circuit to the op-
tical transmitter caused a much higher decrease of the Q-factor
from 29.4 to 6.3. This is explained by a high gate capacitance of
20 pF of the transistor that has a low Q-factor, which causes an
additional finite load to the resonant circuit. In a signal transmis-
sion system it is important to use an amplifier with high gain at
the input to keep the overall noise figure low. For the MR probe
a degradation of the Q-factor, which in this case is the first am-
plification step, causes a degradation of SNR for the complete
transmission system. The specific JFET in our setup was chosen
because it was available as plain chip on short notice. It serves
for the first proof of concept but will be replaced by a different
device with a high Q gate capacitance in future.
The measured dynamic range of the transmitter was 50 dB,
with the noise floor level at . This transmitter was used
at a very low electrical power level of 2.21 mW at a bias current
of 1.3 mA provided by the optical power converter. In this ap-
plication it is important to keep the power level low, because
any power will also generate heat, which has to be avoided. For
this reason the VCSEL with the very low threshold current of
1 mA was chosen. The dedicated reflector for the PPC reduced
the efficiency by only 4% from 33% to 29%. When fixating the
reflector to the PPC with optical adhesive, the adhesive uninten-
tionally penetrated into the gap of the reflector due to capillary
forces, which decreased the efficiency to 21% due to the change
in the acceptance angle. In the future, this will be compensated
by adjusting the distance of the fiber to the reflector.
B. MR Phantom Measurements
Fig. 7(a) and (b) depicts the images taken with the micro-
Helmholtz coil transmitted directly by a cable for a horizontal
slice with the coil axis through plane [Fig. 7(a)] and vertical
slices with the coil axis in plane [Fig. 7(b)]. Fig. 7(c) and (d)
shows the results for the same measurement with the signal
transmitted via the optical transmission system. The resulting
images show a high spatial resolution of the micro coil; even
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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MEDICAL IMAGING, VOL. 27, NO. 12, DECEMBER 2008
TABLE II
SNR COMPARISON OF DIRECT ELECTRICAL TRANSMISSION
AND OPTICAL TRANSMISSION
the micro-tube with a wall thickness of 0.3 mm can be seen on
which the micro-coil is mounted.
Table II shows the SNR of three measurements. The direct
electrical transmission technique reveals a 20 dB higher SNR
compared with the present optical transmission system. This
SNR loss can be partly explained by the degradation of the
Q-factor caused by the optical transmission system as discussed
in the section above.
Fig. 8(a) shows an exemplary 1-D projection as used for
catheter tracking. Fig. 8(b) contains about 50 subsequently
measured tracking positions while moving the tip manually
along a P-shape. The absence of any false position measure-
ments demonstrates the robustness of catheter tracking with
optical signal transmission in the phantom.
Obviously, the SNR loss of 20 dB in optical transmission with
respect to direct electrical transmission is severe. However, a de-
cent comparison must include the aspect of RF safety, i.e., op-
tical transmission should be compared to alternative methods of
RF safe transmission. To this end, the concept of using minia-
ture transformers to improve RF safety [5], [6] is the most rel-
evant directly analogous method, since it also provides general
purpose MR signal transmission. Each transformer contributes
an SNR loss of about 2.5 dB, and for an efficient reduction of
RF induced heating of a catheter in a 1.5-T MR system four
transformers are used, resulting in a loss of 10 dB. The optical
transmission reveals yet a higher loss, but provides some clear
advantages. The losses do not scale with the field strength as
in the transformer concept, where the required number of trans-
formers increases with field strength [15]. Most importantly, the
optical transmission is inherently RF safe, while the safe use of a
transformer cable has to be proven under clinical circumstances
which include a number of variables. Finally, the SNR of the
optical transmission is expected to improve as discussed above.
IV. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION
The safe application of active intravascular MR devices re-
quires special means to avoid RF induced heating. Therefore,
long conducting cables have to be avoided. In this paper, an
all-optical system for a safe transmission of MR signals for in-
travascular imaging and device tracking is presented. The op-
tical transmission system is designed with small scale compo-
nents and examined in MR and transmission experiments. The
optical transmitter is based on a small laser diode and a transistor
integrated in chip form. The power supply of this transmitter
FANDREY et al.: DEVELOPMENT OF AN ACTIVE INTRAVASCULAR MR DEVICE WITH AN OPTICAL TRANSMISSION SYSTEM 1727

with a direct transmission. Tracking is already feasible with this

all optical system, but the noise figure should be improved for
an intravascular imaging application, which is currently being
pursued.
In the future, all components will be integrated into the lumen
of the catheter next to the micro-coil. With the current size of
the optical power converter, this system can be integrated into a
seven French catheter.

Fig. 8. (a) Projection plot of catheter channel signal. From the position of the
signal peak in three projections, the 3-D-position of the tip was calculated auto-
matically by the MR system. (b) Catheter tip was moved manually in the bowl
along a “P”-shaped path during continuous tracking of the tip position. All sub-
sequent tip positions were marked by the MR system with a cross.
consists of a special photovoltaic power converter PPC, which
is coupled to an active supply via a low loss reflector to achieve
a maximum efficiency of the opto-electrical power conversion.
Projection-based tip tracking was achieved with the presented
setup, and high-resolution images were obtained in a phantom.
The obtained images still have a 20 dB lower SNR compared
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