“…An alternative for determining AIF without introducing disruptions in vascular architectures and blood circulation is an implanted RF coil covering an artery of interest. Implanted RF coils have been used for: (1) imaging small anatomical structures (e.g., spinal cord) located in deep regions of the animal body in order to increase signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) over that obtained by a regular exterior RF coil [8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19], and (2) imaging vascular walls with an implanted intravascular or extravascular RF coil [20,21]. In this work, we have designed an 17 O implanted RF coil and combined this coil with the in vivo 17 O NMR approach for reliably measuring the AIF of 17 O-labeled water tracer in the rat carotid artery after a H 2 17 O bolus injection.…”