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Enhancing signal-to-noise ratio of clinical 1.5T MRI using metasurface-inspired flexible wraps

Applied Physics A volume 129, Article number: 725 (2023) Cite this article

Abstract

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is one of the prominent diagnostic tools which uses non-invasive modalities for clinical imaging of human body parts. Signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), the key figure of merit that defines the quality of any MRI scan, can be boosted by increasing either the applied static magnetic field \(({B}_{0})\) from the scanner’s electromagnet or the oscillating radiofrequency (RF) magnetic field (\({B}_{1}\)) from the transceiver coil. However, higher RF field intensity inside scanners could bring adverse effects like inhomogeneity of transmitted RF magnetic field, increase in tissue heating (characterized as specific absorption rate (SAR): \(3.2\)W/kg—safety limit) due to stronger RF electric field hotspots and, thus, raising potential safety concerns for patients. Metasurfaces are artificial structures that can enhance magnetic fields in their near-field region, thus find applications in boosting the SNR of MRI without stepping up \({B}_{0}\). However, most of the reported metasurfaces for \(1.5\)T MRI are bulky and cannot conform to human body parts with different anatomies. Here, we propose a metasurface-inspired flexible structure that can be wrapped on patients’ body parts with different curvatures for boosting the SNR of \(1.5\)T MRI scans. An equivalent circuit model, formulated for elucidating electromagnetic behavior of the proposed metasurface-inspired wrap, has validated the reflection characteristics obtained from full-wave simulations. The proposed design is investigated in flattened and different wrapped conditions on the phantoms/bio-models mimicking human properties for estimating the enhancement in received magnetic field (\({B}_{1}^{-}\)) and SNR at \(1.5\)T MRI. A boost of \(\sim8\) times in \({B}_{1}^{-}\) as well as SNR enhancement factor is observed on the surface of metasurface-wrapped bio-model under excitation of transceiver birdcage coil while maintaining SAR well under the safety limit. Numerical analyses for the conformed shapes of metasurface show that the proposed wrap could be used as a “wearable add-on” inside \(1.5\)T MRI transceiver arrays for significant SNR enhancement in scans of different body parts, such as head, legs, etc.

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Data availability

The analyzed data included and described in the manuscript will be available to researchers and scientists from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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Funding

This work is supported by the Prime Minister’s Research Fellowship (PMRF) provided by the Ministry of Education (MoE), Government of India, and iHUB DivyaSampark Technology Innovation Hub (TIH), IIT Roorkee (Project TIH/RP/\(05\)).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Electronics and Electrical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati, Guwahati, Assam, 781039, India

    Jegyasu Gupta, Priyanka Das, Ratnajit Bhattacharjee & Debabrata Sikdar

  2. iHUB DivyaSampark, Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee, Roorkee, Uttarakhand, 247667, India

    Priyanka Das

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  1. Jegyasu Gupta
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  2. Priyanka Das
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  4. Debabrata Sikdar
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Contributions

JG: conceptualization (lead); theoretical analysis (lead); data curation (lead); formal analysis (lead); investigation (lead); methodology (lead); resources (lead); writing—original draft (lead). PD: methodology (equal); theoretical analysis (equal). RB: project administration (equal); supervision (equal); writing—review and editing (equal). DS: funding acquisition (lead); project administration (lead); supervision (lead); writing—review and editing (lead).

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Correspondence to Jegyasu Gupta.

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Gupta, J., Das, P., Bhattacharjee, R. et al. Enhancing signal-to-noise ratio of clinical 1.5T MRI using metasurface-inspired flexible wraps. Appl. Phys. A 129, 725 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00339-023-06962-x

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