Magnetic Resonance Microscopy. Группа авторов

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Figure 2.3 Electromagnetic field distribution of the TE_01δ mode of a ring resonator (relative permittivity 500, outer radius 10 mm, height 10 mm) filled with a sample (relative permittivity 50) for varying inner to outer radii ratio: magnetic field (first line) and electric field (second line) field maps and lines (gray arrows), and both fields profiles (third line). The 2D maps are plotted in grayscale with a linear value distribution. From [21].

      2.3.2 Power Loss Contributions in a Ceramic Probe

As ceramic probes do not require the use of an electronical circuit to tune and match at the Larmor frequency, the power losses are mainly due to the ceramic material losses and the electric field–sample interactions. Another contribution that is not considered here is that of the metallic feeding loop that is used to induce the mode’s field distribution in the ceramic resonator. As it is a small, nonresonant loop, its contribution is considered insignificant.

      While operating in different regimes, the loss phenomenon is the same in the ceramic material and in the sample: it is energy dissipated as heat within complex permittivity materials immersed in an electromagnetic field [19]. In practice, these power losses are expressed as the integral over the object volume V of the power loss density, which involves two local variables: the imaginary part of the material permittivity and the electric field intensity. The power losses in a material of complex permittivity real quantities) are expressed in Equation 2.7.

(2.7)

      The imaginary part of the permittivity is equal to the real part of the permittivity, ϵ₀ the vacuum permittivity, ϵ_r the material relative permittivity, and tan δ the total loss tangent. Materials are usually described by the quantities that can be measured in experiments, the real part of the permittivity, and the total loss tangent. The latter quantifies the effects of two distinct phenomena responsible for EM power losses in the material: bound charge polarization and electric conduction when the material has a microscopic nonzero free electron density [20]. As biological samples contain a significant proportion of water, the conductivity of the sample is dominant because of dissociated ions available in the water solution, and the losses depend on the electrical conductivity σ:

      The ceramic probe is modeled as a ceramic ring resonator (inner radius r_h, outer radius r_d, height L, relative permittivity ϵ_r, loss tangent tan δ) filled with a cylindrical biological sample (radius r_h, height L, and electrical conductivity σ_sample). With the theoretical insight about the TE_01δ mode field distribution provided in Section 2.3.1, it is possible, as detailed in [21], to develop an analytical expression for the power losses in the ceramic probe at the cost of some approximations:

       The field distribution used to express the dielectric resonator losses is that of a lossless resonator because losses in the ceramic are considered small (tan δ ≪ 10−1).

       The field distribution of the ring resonator is assumed equal to that of the corresponding disk without field leakages at the lateral boundaries.

      With these assumptions, the power losses expression reduces to Equation 2.8 with the axial wavenumber ky known from the mode study, the maximum magnetic field amplitude in the disk resonator, and τ a penalty coefficient accounting for the field decreasing in the sample compared with the disk field distribution, estimated from the knowledge of both the ring and disk field distributions.

(2.8)

The so-called Lommel’s integrals, involving Bessel functions, can be found in [22,23].

      2.3.3 SNR Estimation

      The SNR is proportional to the transmit efficiency as follows [24]:

(2.9)

      with H₀ the magnetic field amplitude induced in the sample by the probe and P_loss the total power losses. For ceramic probes working with the TE_01δ mode, the latter includes the ceramic resonator and the sample contributions. Assuming the magnetic field amplitude equal to that of a disk resonator in its center, weighted by the penalty coefficient τ, Equation 2.9 becomes:

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