Deborah Anne Langman1, Ira B. Goldberg2, Paul J. Finn1, Jack W. Judy3, Daniel B. Ennis1
1Radiological Sciences, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA, USA; 2Electrical Engineering , UCLA, Los Angeles, CA, USA; 3Electrical Engineering, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA, USA
MR imaging of pacemakers poses the risk of thermal damage due to RF-induced heating at the pacemaker lead tip. The objective of this study was to investigate the effect of solution conductivity on RF induced heating of pacing leads using HEC, PAA, and saline solutions. Both the HEC and saline achieve peak heating near 0.5 S/m while heating in PAA solutions continues to decline with increasing conductivity. A conservative estimate of the energy deposited measured by RF-induced lead tip heating can be achieved using 0.5 S/m HEC, which exhibits little thermal convection and a peak in conductivity dependant heating.