{"doi":"10.1002/mrm.30474","title":"Improving fat saturation robustness in outer extremity <scp>MRI</scp> with a local shim coil insert","abstract":"Abstract Purpose High‐quality fat suppression is essential for various MRI applications. In musculoskeletal imaging, poor fat suppression caused by severe B 0 inhomogeneity can obscure important lesions, potentially leading to inaccurate diagnoses. This problem is particularly exacerbated in off‐isocenter imaging, where conventional shimming using second‐order spherical harmonic shim coils often proves inadequate due to elevated B 0 inhomogeneity. To address this challenge, we configured a simple local shim insert to provide additional localized B 0 shimming for off‐isocenter regions, offering a practical hardware solution. Methods We designed and constructed a seven‐channel shim coil and evaluated its performance in comparison to conventional second‐order spherical harmonic shimming within a targeted volume near the scanner bore. The coil was tested with both phantom and in vivo studies using a clinical 3 T MRI scanner. Results The improved B 0 homogeneity achieved with the local shim coil significantly enhanced fat saturation (fat–sat) uniformity across the imaged volumes. This improvement was particularly beneficial for areas far from the scanner isocenter, where B 0 inhomogeneity is most severe. Our results indicated a 40% reduction in RMS error of the B 0 field for elbow imaging and 35% for hand imaging, highlighting substantial improvements in B 0 field homogeneity. Additionally, the image quality score increased by 1 point for both hand and elbow images, reflecting enhanced fat–sat quality. Conclusion The simple local shim insert we configured improves fat–sat capability in both hand and elbow imaging. It offers the potential for improving off‐isocenter musculoskeletal MRI.","journal":"Magnetic Resonance in Medicine","year":2025,"id":540674,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":2,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9478,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2025-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":422483,"name":"Hsin‐Jung Yang","orcid":"0000-0001-9379-5495","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1317664,"name":"Nader Binesh","orcid":null,"position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1312483,"name":"Archana Malagi","orcid":"0000-0002-2332-170X","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1123644,"name":"Yun Shang","orcid":"0000-0003-3429-7730","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1312485,"name":"Li‐Ting Huang","orcid":"0009-0007-1170-8767","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":913655,"name":"Jeremy Zepeda","orcid":"0000-0001-8955-2992","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":770527,"name":"Fardad Michael Serry","orcid":"0000-0002-9168-8765","position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":289229,"name":"Debiao Li","orcid":"0000-0001-8560-8231","position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1156165,"name":"Hui Han","orcid":"0000-0003-4440-4421","position":9,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1317662,"name":"Ziyang Long","orcid":null,"position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":32,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T02:52:42.901627Z","pmid":"40106770","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}