If young Harry and friends had not cruised around Hogwarts unseen, hidden by an “invisibility cloak,” much of the hype surrounding metamaterials might itself never have seen the light of day.

But when, half a decade ago, researchers made tentative steps toward what had been considered a theoretical possibility — using an artificially structured “meta” material to manipulate light or other electromagnetic waves in ways not achievable in nature — it did not take more than a clever headline or two to make the connection to the stuff of J. K. Rowling’s wildly popular novels.

Scientists cautioned then that optical invisibility was hardly just around the corner. And that caution is repeated today. But researchers in the field point out that great strides have been made in the field of metamaterials, and there are some applications of the concept that may come into use in the next few years.

Metamaterials may help improve magnetic resonance imaging, said Professor George V. Eleftheriades (ECE), by being used in the coils that generate and detect electromagnetic fields. A metamaterial coil could improve the signal-to-noise ratio in these machines, and improve the contrast of images.

It may even be possible to use a metamaterial lens to shift the electromagnetic fields generated by the MRI machine in a difficult-to-access part of the body to a different spot where they would be more readily detected by the coil, Professor Eleftheriades said.

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