Design and Characterization of a Metasurface Enhancement Plate for 3T MRI

Abstract

A signal enhancement metasurface composed of a periodic linear alignment of closely–coupled wire resonators is proposed. It serves to locally enhance the radio frequency (RF) field in a specific region of interest for Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI). Electrical elongation by capacitive loading of the wires allows to adjust the resonance to an MR scanner's operating frequency of 123.5 MHz. Two prototypes are manufactured and characterized on-bench. MRI experiments allow to separate effects on the Tx/Rx fields showing an SNR enhancement factor up to 2.4.