Wireless deep-subwavelength metamaterial enabling sub-mm resolution magnetic resonance imaging

A wireless deep-subwavelength metamaterial architecture is proposed, modeled and demonstrated for a high-resolution magnetic resonance imaging (HR-MRI) application that is miniaturized to be resonant at approximately λ0/1500 dimensions. The proposed structure has the adjustable resonance frequency from 65 MHz to 5.5 GHz for the sub-cm footprint area (8 mm × 8 mm for this study) and provides a quality factor (Q-factor) of approximately 80 in free space for 123 MHz of operation. This structure consists of a cross-via metallized partial-double-layer metamaterial, sandwiching a dielectric thin film; this structure strongly localizes the electric field in this film and has a highly capacitive metal overlay that allows for a wide range of frequency adjustment. Although the achieved resonance frequencies enable a large number of applications, as a proof-of-concept demonstration, we experimentally showed the operation of this wireless metastructure in HR-MRI to highlight its precise frequency adjustment and signal-to-noise-ratio (SNR) improvement capabilities. The proposed metamaterial was found to maintains high Q-factors despite loading with a body-mimicking lossy phantom. The experimental results indicated that the proposed metastructure can be used as an SNR-enhancing device offering 15-fold SNR enhancements that allows for imaging of objects as small as 200 μm in diameter in its vicinity, at an unprecedented level of resolution at the given DC field using standard head coils. As a result of its deep-subwavelength miniaturization accompanied by reasonable Q-factor with outstanding resonance frequency adjustment capability, this class of metastructure is proved to be an excellent candidate for in vivo medical applications.