Evaluation of Egyptian axe dipole antenna as an array element for head imaging at 7T MRI

In this abstract we propose a new antenna design as a transmit array element for proton head imaging at 7T that combines a small feeding dipole that is capacitively coupled, as a so-called ‘indirect’ or ‘passive’ feed, to an ‘Egyptian’ axe dipole. B1+ and SAR efficiency of the proposed antenna have been compared numerically with a conventional dipole antenna of the same length. A head array consisting of eight antenna elements has been constructed and tested. This array element offers a large reduction in SAR compared to equally sized linear dipoles while maintaining their B1+ profile as well as reducing the impact of antenna loading on the resonance frequency.