Metamaterial inspired wireless coil for clinical breast imaging

Abstract

In this work, we propose an application of a metamaterial inspired volumetric wireless coil (WLC) based on coupled split-loop resonators for targeted breast MRI at 1.5 T. Due to strong electromagnetic coupling with the body coil, the metamaterial inspired WLC locally focuses radiofrequency (RF) magnetic flux in the target region, thus improving both transmit and receive performance of the external body coil. This leads to substantial enhancement in local transmit efficiency and improvement of RF safety. Phantom images showed a tenfold increase of signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) in the region-of-interest (ROI) and, at the same time, an almost 50-fold reduction in transmit power relative to the same body coil used alone.

Keywords: Breast MRI; Metamaterial inspired RF coils; SNR enhancement; Specific absorption rate; Split-loop resonator; Transmit efficiency; Wireless coil.