Search

In this paper, we present a fundamental investigation to improve the B1 efficiency and the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of a radio frequency (RF) surface coil for ultrahigh-field magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) by utilizing a high-impedance surface (HIS) as the RF shield. An analytical investigation indicates that a circular loop backed by a perfect magnetic conductor (PMC), which is the ideal case of an HIS, suggests an improved magnetic field compared with the case of a perfect electric conductor (PEC) and the case without any shield. This improvement is verified by a full-wave simulation, where the surface coil is modeled by an ideal impressed current model with azimuthal component ( J\text {surf, \alpha }= 1 A/m). The electromagnetic field is effectively shielded out behind the PEC and PMC shields compared with the case without any shield. Furthermore, the surface coil with uniform current distribution and the PMC shield is realized by a series resonant loop structure and a 2-D HIS structure, respectively. Since the normal component of the magnetic field is supported at the surface of an HIS, whereas suppressed by a conventional PEC, the \boldsymbolB1 field in the vicinity of the HIS shield is enhanced compared with the case with a PEC shield. Hence, an improvement on SNR and \boldsymbolB1 efficiency is achieved by utilizing an HIS shield, especially in the regions adjacent to the surface coil. It has been found that the improvement of B1 efficiency is more prominent than the improvement of SNR due to different normalizations. The difference of peak SAR between considered shields, which is used for B1 efficiency normalization, is considerably larger than the difference of the power loss within the phantom, which is used for the SNR normalization. The proposed approach is validated by full-wave finite-element method simulations and near-field measurements, which reveal good agreement with each other. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this paper, we systematically investigate the electromagnetic (EM) field of a stripline dipole coil element backed by various shielding plates, which are characterized by surface impedance. The initial analysis is based on a 2-D finite-element-method model, where the considered surface impedance was categorized in terms of magnitude and phase. It has been demonstrated that the shielding plate can be approximately modeled by the magnitude of a complex surface impedance if the absolute EM field distribution is considered. Additionally, as the magnitude of the surface impedance increases, the magnetic and electric fields excited by the stripline tend to distribute in a broader manner. Thus, the transversal homogeneity of the B1 field of a stripline coil can be improved by a shielding plate with a high surface impedance, which has been verified by 3-D models based on single- and multi-coil elements. For the experimental validation, two shielding plates—a copper-plated substrate and a high-impedance surface, which exhibits a small and large surface impedance, respectively—are considered. An excellent agreement of field distributions between numerical simulation and measurement has been observed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]