Metamaterial inspired resonator for targeted breast MRI at 1.5 T.

In this work, we show an improvement of the transmit efficiency and receive sensitivity of the conventional birdcage body coil by using a volumetric self-resonant periodic structure of the inductively coupled split-loop resonators. This concept can be implemented to enhance the quality of breast clinical magnetic resonance imaging. Phantom study with the proposed self- resonant structure showed a 10-fold higher signal-to-noise ratio and 60-fold reduced input power compared to the standard birdcage body coil used without the resonator.