A Surface RF Coil with a Configurable Field of View for 23Na MR Spectroscopy at 0.5T

This work is aimed at the development of a new transceiver radio frequency (RF) coil with a desired configuration field of view (FOW) for
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Na magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) of a thin surface layer of human skin. The main goal is to localize the RF magnetic field near the RF coil surface to ensure the selective excitation of the epidermis layer in evaluating specific metabolism disorders using MRS. The RF coil is designed as a multimode resonator consisting of a set of nested inductively coupled split-ring resonators with capacitive loads to create a field in the desired FOV. Due to the strong coupling of split-ring resonators, hybridized eigenmodes are excited. The specific eigenmode is chosen according to the desired FOW, and its eigenfrequency is tuned to the Larmor frequency of Sodium at 0.5 T. The coil is designed to be suitable for operation in portable single-side magnetic resonance (MR) spectrometers.