Improving $B_{1}$ Efficiency and Signal-to-Noise-Ratio of a Surface Coil by a High-Impedance-Surface RF Shield for 7-T Magnetic Resonance Imaging

In this paper, we present a fundamental investigation to improve the B
₁
efficiency and the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of a radio frequency (RF) surface coil for ultrahigh-held 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 verihed by a full-wave simulation, where the surface coil is modeled by an ideal impressed current model with azimuthal component (J
_surf,α
= 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 B
₁
held in the vicinity of the HIS shield is enhanced compared with the case with a PEC shield. Hence, an improvement on SNR and B
₁
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 B
₁
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 B
₁
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-held measurements, which reveal good agreement with each other.