In this work we present a systematic evaluation of the potential of combining dielectric materials with an array of electric dipoles for MRI. Design parameters include the permittivity and length of a dielectric sleeve, as well as the dipole length and position of the tuning inductors. Results show that the combined approach improves transmit efficiency and SNR by ~10 to 15 % compared to an optimized dipole array without dielectric sleeve. The resulting induced current densities reflect an improved correspondence with the ideal current pattern, which explains the gains in performance.@en

The information of electrical properties of biological tissues within human body can be useful information for diagnosis, tissue characterization, hyperthermia treatment planning and MR safety control.
CSI-EPT is an MR base imaging modality, which reconstructs the electrical properties of the sample. However, this method have not been implemented in practice due to the following issues:
1) The exact transmit phase is not available from acquisition.
2) The incident field cannot be measured directly.
3) The loss of sensitivity at those regions with low electrical fields.
4) The sufficiency of 2D configuration, which has been used in most published results, have not be verified.
This thesis investigates the experimental feasibility of CSI-EPT through simulations and phantom experiments, implementing a parallel transceive array under two different excitation modes. After which we give answers or improvements to the above issues.