this thesis described the investigation, construction and testing of two sets of rf coils for their applications in novel lung mri imaging techniques. in the first part of the thesis, a quadrature-driven birdcage coil for rat lung mri using inert fluorinated gases was developed. methods for coil tuning and impedance matching were presented and discussed. the sensitivity improvement resulted from a quadrature-driven mode was quantitatively measured, and compared to the linear reference. a dual-angle method (dam) was studied and implemented to quantitatively measure the b1 field homogeneity, and a b1 field map was generated at the center of the coil. in vivo rat lung imaging experiments were conducted using the constructed coil, and the multi-slice images acquired from the rat lung were presented. in the second part of the thesis, a 1h-129xe double-birdcage coil for rat lung mri using hyperpolarized 129xe gas was developed. the q factors of each coil was measured and compared before and after the double-birdcage structure was formed. the coupling between the two coils was tested, and a geometrical decoupling method was implemented and optimized. imaging scans using thermal xenon phantom and saline syringe phantom were conducted with image registration post-processing performed, and the dual-frequency scan ability of the developed coil was verified and evaluated.