RF coils, usually in receive mode, arranged to cover the whole region of interest. It has both the spatial coverage of a large region-of-interest coil and the high SNR of a surface coil.

From Hitachi Medical Systems America Inc.;
Hitachi expanded its portfolio with the Echelon™ 1.5T. The MRI scanner combines a compact magnet and a scalable 8-channel RF system with high-performance gradients and slew rate to select short echo times, small field of views, high matrices and thin slices. Standard features of the Echelon MRI system include higher-order active shim, RAPID (parallel imaging for use on brain MRI, body, cardiovascular imaging, and orthopedic coils), multiple coil ports, and an advanced reconstruction engine.

An array coil combines the advantages of smaller coils (high SNR) with those of larger coils (large measurement field). This type of RF coil is composed of separate multiple smaller coils, which can be used individually (switchable coil) or combined.
When used simultaneously, the elements can either be:
See also the related poll result: '3rd party coils are better than the original manufacturer coils'

A receiver coil with more than one segment, which can be utilized as a single or a multiple segment coil.

See also Array Coil, Receiver Coil and Switchable Coil.

A signal to noise improvement method that is accomplished by taking the average of several FID`s made under similar conditions to suppress the effects of random variations or random artifacts. It is a common method to increase the SNR by averaging several measurements of the signal.
The number of averages is also referred to as the number of excitations (NEX) or the number of acquisitions (NSA). Doubling the number of acquisitions will increase the SNR by √2. The approximate amount of improvement in signal to noise (SNR) ratio is calculated as the square root of the number of excitations.
By using multiple averages, respiratory motion can be reduced in the same way that multiple averages increase the signal to noise ratio. NEX/NSA will increase SNR but will not affect contrast unless the tissues are being lost in noise (low CNR). Scan time scales directly with NEX/NSA and SNR as the square root of NEX/NSA.
The use of phase array coils allows the number of signal averages to be decreased with their superior SNR and resolution, thereby decreasing scan time.