Achieving maximum Signal-to-Noise Ratio with a radio frequency MRI coil depends highly on the geometry and position of the coil with respect to the imaging volume of interest. Although the greatest SNR is achieved when the coil is form fitting and close to the surface of the imaging volume, some shapes may be difficult to fit. One technique to expand the types and shapes of surfaces on which coils can be constructed is the use of conductive silver ink for creating the coil traces [1-5]. However, despite the high conductivity of silver itself, silver ink coils have reduced conductivity. We hypothesize that loop conductivity can be increased while retaining the ability to build coils on unconventional surfaces by copper plating the silver ink trace once it has been created on a surface. If so, then these coils may be constructed while maintaining similar coil performance as standard wire or foil trace coils. Copper plating of ink traces does have the potential of reducing the flexibility of the silver ink trace. This work tests how much loop conductivity and SNR is improved with copper plating of the silver ink coil trace. Future work will address the effects of copper plating on the loop flexibility.Six coils were evaluated in this work (coils A-F), as shown in Figure 1, with all imaging done on a Siemens Tim Trio 3T MRI Scanner. All coils were constructed on fiberglass formers as 52/62 mm inner/outer diameter coils with a single gap. The comparison standard (Coil-A, see Table1 for characteristics) was solid copper. Coils B and C were thick and thin silver ink traces (Creative Materials Inc., 120-07), respectively, without plating. Coils D-F were thin silver ink traces that were copper plated for 5, 10 and 15 minutes, respectively. All loops were coated with varnish to keep the thin copper layers from oxidizing. 18-gauge tinned-copper wire leads and a tune/match circuit were positioned at the gap (Figure 1). Leads were connected to Coil-A with solder and with silver ink for all other loops. Silver ink traces were cured at 150° C for 5 minutes. Electrode copper plating was performed for coils D-F after an acid wash at 0.5 volts. The DC resistance was measured for each loop before circuitry was added. Each loop was tuned and matched at 123 MHz with an insertion loss better than -35 dB. Active and preamp detuning were better than -35 dB and -20 dB, respectively. SNR measurements were made using standard GRE sequences (TR/TE/flip/FOV =500ms/4ms/90°/280mm, 128x128 matrix). SNR plots were constructed by averaging 5 image pixels through the axis of the coil, over 5 different scans for each coil.Results from this study show that the silver ink used can be electroplated with copper and, although the plating only occurs on one side of the silver trace, the electrical conductivity of the loop does increase. Silver ink thickness, plated copper thickness and DC resistance measurements are presented in Table 1. In addition, Table 1 shows example relative SNR measurements from ROIs near the coil. Figure 2 shows the relative SNR results for the 6-coil comparison. As expected, these plots show the significant difference in SNR between the solid copper loop and the ink loops. They also demonstrate how conductivity is increased with copper plating. Results for Coil-E were not expected since its copper thickness would indicate a resulting SNR between those of Coil-D and Coil-F. Although every effort was made to keep the coil tune and match properties consistent, the loops were very sensitive and there may have been some unresolved problem with the silver ink wire attachments for Coil-E during the SNR measurements.This technique worked well for the fiberglass substrate used in this study. For this process to work, the substrate is required to withstand the >120° C ink curing temperature as well as the acidic, turbulent-bath electroplating process. Uniformity of the plated copper thickness was highly dependent on the anode/cathode geometry within the plating bath. Copper oxidized quickly at these thicknesses and measures need to be taken to prevent this process quickly after plating. Future work will investigate plating on flexible substrates and determine how much copper can be plated on the ink while maintaining complete substrate flexibility.This work demonstrates that copper plating of silver ink coils is possible and it indicates that significant improvements in coil trace conductivity can be achieved. Consequently, the SNR performance of silver ink coils that have been plated with copper improves over silver ink coils without plating.