Mikhail Kozlov1, Thomas Rothe1, Robert Turner1
1Neurophysics, Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences, Leipzig, Sachsen, Germany
We present a fast and reliable SAR calculation procedure, versatile with regard to any 3-D EM solver strategies, and adapted to multi-core processing. When power loss and mass density data are provided on an equidistant temporary mesh, with well defined mesh refinement steps, a simple but robust iterative algorithm, involving prediction over cubic volumes of a specified mass, can significantly accelerate SAR calculation. Our in-house SAR calculation algorithm uses the Matlab parallel computing toolkit. Increasing the number of cores gave a nearly linear reduction of computation time. In addition to the 10-gram average SAR data relevant to IEC guidelines, values of the average SAR for any head or body part within a coil can be provided.