Design and Characteristics of a Metamaterial Transmit/Receive Coil Element for 7 Tesla MRI

In this work the usage of a composite right/lefthanded (CRLH) metamaterial transmission line resonator as a transmit/receive coil for 7 Tesla magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is investigated. On the basis of zeroth-order resonant antennas (ZORAs) a zeroth-order resonant coil (ZORC) was designed. Due to a constant current distribution along the element, a homogenous magnetic field is achieved in a larger area compared to a conventional microstrip transmission line (MTL) element. Numerical and experimental results are presented.