Magnetic resonance guided focused ultrasound (MRgFUS) is a non-invasive therapeutic modality for neurodegenerative diseases that allows real-time imaging of thetargeted regions. However, MR image quality is poor and severely limits the technology due to the use of the body coil for focal targeting. Acoustic simulationsdemonstrated an acoustic transparency (signal loss <1%) of the coil when used for thalamic sonication. In vivo results showed increase of the SNR over the body coil by afactor of 7.3 and 7.6 in a brain image with and without the presence of the transducer, respectively.