Design of a ceramic dielectric resonator for NMR microimaging at 14.1 tesla

Radiofrequency coil design for magnetic resonance becomes increasingly challenging at high magnetic field strengths due to resonator dimensions being a significant fraction of the electromagnetic wavelength, as well as the increased radiative and component losses intrinsic to higher frequencies. In this article an inductively fed dual-disk ceramic dielectric resonator was constructed from barium strontium titanate, which has a high relative permittivity of 323, for operation at 600 MHz (14.1 tesla). The design is very simple, avoids wavelength issues, uses high Q-materials, and has the additional advantage of being able to change the resonator's effective diameter. Preliminary images show a significantly higher signal-to-noise than obtained using a similarly-sized conventional saddle coil.