Flexible and Wearable Metasurfaces of Spiral Quartet Arrays for Boosting Signal‐to‐Noise Ratio of 1.5T Magnetic Resonance Imaging

• Published in: Advanced engineering materials Vol. 27; no. 16
• Main Authors: Gupta, Jegyasu, Bhattacharjee, Ratnajit, Kanagaraj, Subramani, Sikdar, Debabrata
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: 01.08.2025
• Subjects: flexible metasurfaces; magnetic resonance imaging; signal‐to‐noise ratio; wearable metamaterials
• ISSN: 1438-1656; 1527-2648
• DOI: 10.1002/adem.202500155

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has established itself as a cornerstone imaging modality in modern radiology, delivering high‐resolution insights for comprehensive disease detection and therapeutic monitoring. Metamaterials have significantly advanced MRI imaging capabilities by enhancing signal‐to‐noise ratio (SNR) through their remarkable ability to confine and amplify electromagnetic fields when placed as clinical add‐ons between patients and transceiver arrays. However, considerable obstacles continue to hinder the widespread clinical adoption of conventional metamaterials, mainly because of their bulky and rigid designs, along with inability to adapt to varying anatomies of different subjects. Herein, to resolve these limitations, this study introduces a flexible metasurface (MS) of spiral quartet arrays for boosting SNR of 1.5T MRI, enabling efficient imaging of body‐parts with varying curvatures. Numerical analyses reveal that the MS provides high magnetic field localization within phantom and human biomodel. Laboratory experiments of developed MS demonstrate a peak enhancement of sixfold in the magnetic fields inside phantom wrapped with MS. In addition, MRI scans acquired using designed MS achieve a fourfold boost in SNR compared to those obtained using only receiver coils. Thus, the developed flexible MS presents an opportunity for creating metamaterial‐based devices as clinical accessories, facilitating more efficient, faster, and cost‐effective MRI scans. This study introduces a flexible MS, based on spiral quartet arrays, for developing metadevices as clinical accessories for efficiently imaging patients’ different body parts with diverse anatomies and varying curvatures. The developed MS holds significant potential for widespread application in clinical MRIs, improving imaging efficiency and advancing this innovative technology toward practical integration into healthcare systems.