Kevan James Thompson Anderson1, Graham A. Wright1,2
1Medical Biophysics, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada; 2Imaging Research, Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Safety concerns exist regarding the use of conventional guidewires in an MR scanner. Recently, an MR-compatible guidewire design has been evaluated but visualization is limited to passive techniques. In this study, a method is presented for actively visualizing the conducting segment of an MR-compatible guidewire by magnetically coupling it to a pick-up coil located inside a guide catheter. In contrast to conventional active guidewires, the approach incorporates signal reception into the catheter rather than the guidewire to avoid the size constraints that limit the use of safety features.