Metamaterial line element on a thin substrate for magnetic resonance imaging RF coils

An optimized Metamaterial line resonator element for a Metamaterial imaging RF coil is developed for the ultrahigh field MRI systems. The coil element performance is compared to that of the transmission line (microstrip) [1] and the dipole [2,5] coil elements for the 10.5T MRI with a Larmor frequency of 447 MHz. Good penetration into the test phantom is observed for the Metamaterial element with negligible change in the resonance condition and the Q-factor (~70) after loading. Images of a cylindrical phantom are obtained in the 10.5T Siemens MRI system with proposed metamaterial line element and the dipole element [4] are compared to validate the performance. A 48-cm metamaterial line is simulated to show the extendibility of the line beyond half a wavelength while maintaining the homogeneous field distribution.