Design and evaluation of a 1.1-GHz surface coil resonator for electron paramagnetic resonance-based tooth dosimetry

This paper describes an optimized design of a surface coil resonator for in vivo electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR)-based tooth dosimetry. Using the optimized resonator, dose estimates with the standard error of the mean of approximately 0.5 Gy were achieved with irradiated human teeth. The product of the quality factor and the filling factor of the resonator was computed as an index of relative signal intensity in EPR tooth dosimetry by the use of 3-D electromagnetic wave simulator and radio frequency circuit design environment (ANSYS HFSS and Designer). To verify the simulated results of the signal intensity in our numerical model of the resonator and a tooth sample, we experimentally measured the radiation-induced signals from an irradiated tooth with an optimally designed resonator. In addition to the optimization of the resonator design, we demonstrated the improvement of the stability of EPR spectra by decontamination of the surface coil resonator using an HCl solution, confirming that contamination of small magnetic particles on the silver wire of the surface coil had degraded the stability of the EPR spectral baseline.