Burn depth assessment in clinics is still inaccurate because of the lack of feasible and practical testing devices and methods. Therefore, this process often depends on subjective judgment of burn surgeons. In this study, a new unilateral magnetic resonance imaging (UMRI) sensor equipped with a 2D gradient coil system was established, and we attempted to assess burns using unilateral nuclear magnetic resonance devices. A reduced Halbach magnet was utilized to generate a magnetic field that was relatively homogeneous on a target plane with a suitable field of view for 2D spatial localization. A uniplanar gradient coil system was designed by utilizing the mainstream target field method, and a uniplanar RF (radio frequency) coil was designed by using a timeharmonic inverse method for the UMRI sensor. A 2D image of the cross sections of a simple burn model was obtained by a fast 2D pure-phase encoding imaging method. The design details of the novel single-sided MRI probe and imaging tests are also presented.

A time-harmonic inverse method was employed to design a uniplanar radio frequency(RF) coil for unilateral nuclear magnetic resonance (UNMR) sensors to improve coil sensitivity and signal-to-noise ratio. In the design, an ideal current density was calculated on a planar surface and generated a specified magnetic field, which was perpendicular and correlated to a given in-homogenous main magnetic field with a constant linear static gradient in the region of interest. The basic functions of the current density were represented by a Fourier series, and a simple matrix inversion approach was utilized to obtain the corresponding current coefficients. Stream function techniques were then used to implement this theoretical current density into an RF coil. A uniplanar RF coil for a UNMR sensor was designed and constructed, and the results were presented.

A combination of passive shimming procedures is employed in the design of a unilateral Nuclear Magnetic Resonance magnet. The first shimming procedure used movable permanent magnets to correct the inhomogeneity of the B0 field to a relatively low lev