High temperature superconducting tapes are potential materials for radio frequency coils in magnetic resonance imaging. They show advantages of much lower cost and easier fabrication over HTS thin film coils. Resistance of HTS tape coils in the magnetic field was evaluated and their quality factors were analyzed. A 50 mm in diameter HTS tape coil for 1.5 T high field MRI was demonstrated for phantom imaging. It obtained a 1.11-fold and a 1.36-fold SNR improvement over the same size copper coil at 77 K and 300 K respectively. Technical issues with HTS tape coils in practice were also discussed.