Quantitative evaluation of two-dimensional flexible metasurfaces at 3.0 T

Quantitative evaluation of transmit efficiency and receive-specific SNR were performed for two different metasurfaces in a body-sized phantom for cases with 1) excitation and reception using the system body coil and 2) excitation with the system body coil and reception with a commercial 12-element array. Similar evaluations were performed for one of the metasurfaces in vivo with the receive array present, and for comparisons all measurements were also made with no metasurface present. Both metasurfaces were seen to significantly improve transmit efficiency in all cases, and to improve SNR when the body coil was used for reception, with effects being strong near the metasurface and extending toward the center of the phantom. The metasurfaces had minimal effects on receive SNR of the commercial Rx array.