INTRODUCTION: Sodium MRI has the potential to provide new biochemical information on tissue viability (such as homeostasis and cell membrane integrity), which is not available with standard proton MRI, in a non-invasive and a quantitative manner . This information could be of importance for diagnosis and prognosis of neurodegenerative disease such as multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer’s disease, or for brain cancer and chemotherapy assessment. However, the NMR sodium signal in the brain is around 10,000 times lower than the proton signal, with very short relaxation times. It is therefore necessary to use ultra short TE (UTE) acquisition sequences in conjunction with high magnetic fields and optimized dual-tuned RF coils in order to increase the SNR of the sodium images. In this work, we propose a novel dual nucleus head coil whose design incorporates 8 transmit-receive elements for sodium imaging along with 8 nested transmit-receive elements for proton imaging at 3.0 T to provide dual nucleus capability with minimal degradation of the X-nucleus performance.