Project leaders Xin Zhang, professor of mechanical engineering, electrical and computer engineering, biomedical engineering, and materials science and engineering at the College of Engineering and a BU Photonics Center faculty member, along with Stephan Anderson, School of Medicine professor of radiology, vice chairman of research in Boston Medical Center’s radiology department, and a Photonics Center faculty member) hope to partner with industry collaborators so that their magnetic metamaterial can be adapted for real-world clinical applications as well as applications in non-clinical settings.
“If you are able to deliver something that can increase SNR by a significant margin, we can start to think about possibilities that didn’t exist before,” says Anderson. This could include having MRI near battlefields or in other remote locations. “Being able to simplify this advanced technology is very appealing.”
All aspects of the project are described in elaborate detail in their paper “Boosting magnetic resonance imaging signal-to-noise ratio using magnetic metamaterials” along with its Supplementary Information, which includes extensive EM-field and other analyses, published in Nature’s Communications Physics. The work was supported by the National Institutes of Health, the Boston University College of Engineering Dean’s Catalyst Award, the Boston University Wallace H. Coulter Translational Research Partnership Award, and the Boston University Ignition Award.