Purpose Since high SNR is necessary for high resolution FMRI it is advantageous to place the receive coils close to the area of interest on the monkey's head whenever possible. To this end, we designed flexible 3- or 4-channel receive-only arrays that can be used on monkeys of different sizes as well as for different cortical areas. In addition, the preamplifiers including control electronics are detacheable and can serve a variety of prefabricated and phase-matched arrays of different configurations. Material and Methods Setups of 3 or 4 circular coils of 23-24 mm diameter were hooked up to high reflection coefficient, low noise preamplifiers [1] (Stark Contrast, Erlangen, Germany) via phase matched RF cables with in-line connectors, braid wave traps and bias-Ts for the decoupling dc. The most general version was a linear array of coils with gaps that was sutured onto a soft plastic strip (Figure 1 B,C). Detuning of the individual coils during RF transmission was achieved using dc within the coaxial cables for conventional pin diode controlled high impedance blocking (parallel LC). Experiments were done on anesthetized monkeys [2] on a vertical 4.7T Bruker Biospec running ParaVision 5. The array was positioned over the occipital pole. RF transmission was done with a de-tunable 'type D' partial volume coil [3]. We obtained high-resolution FLASH and FMRI data using EPI with and without acceleration (GRAPPA). The stimulus was a full-field rotating checkerboard. The acquisition parameters are given in the figure captions. Conclusion Compared to a dual-coil setup the modularized phased array provides improved local and global SNR and flexibility in coverage. This features allow for high resolution anatomical imaging and FMRI of the entire early visual cortex, including better performance in deep brain areas. The number of array elements can be expanded, and the flexibility of the modular setup (preamplifier decoupling, connectorized, independent RF lines) allows liberal placement of array elements above other areas of interest (e.g. parietal or temporal lobes) of the monkey brain. 1: Roemer et al., 1990, Magn Reson Med, 16:192-225 2: Logothetis N et al., 1999, Nature Neuroscience, 2:555-562 3: Logothetis N et al., 2002, Neuron, 35:227-242 4: Goense J & Logothetis N, 2007, MRI, 25:740-747