Earl Zastrow1,2, Myles Capstick1,3, and Niels Kuster1,2
1IT'IS Foundation, Zurich, Switzerland, 2Department of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering, ETH-Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland, 3Zurich MedTech AG, Zurich, Switzerland
Patients with elongated conductive implants are generally excluded
from MRI diagnostics because the interaction of the implant with MRI-induced RF
fields can lead to hazardous localized heating in surrounding tissues. Depending
on the complexity of the lead structure, numerical assessment of implant-RF
interactions may require excessive computational overhead and may not be
feasible. To overcome this challenge, an experimental system, based on the revised Tier 3 of the ISO/IEC TS 10974, is developed and validated with full-wave electromagnetics simulations. The experimental system is designed
for the assessment of RF-induced heating of implants, irrespective of the
complexity of the implant structure.
