Enhancement of magnetic resonance imaging with metasurfaces: From concept to human trials

Metasurfaces represent a new paradigm in artificial subwavelength structures due to their potential to overcome many challenges typically associated with metamaterials. However, despite the fact that many intriguing functionalities of metasurfaces have been demonstrated as “a proof of the principle”, real practical applications of metasurfaces are still missing. One of the potential application of metasurfaces is to magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), where by means of the spatial redistribution of the near field it is possible to strongly increase the scanner sensitivity, signal-to-noise ratio, and image resolution. Here, we stress the importance of metasurfaces for improvement of MRI characteristics and present in vivo results obtained with different types of metasurfaces at high (1.5T) and ultra high (7T) field MR machines.