Leeor Alon1, Cem Murat Deniz1,
Riccardo Lattanzi1, Graham Wiggins1, Ryan Brown1,
Daniel K. Sodickson1,2, Yudong Zhu1
1Center for Biomedical Imaging,
Department of Radiology, NYU School of Medicine, NYU School of Medicine, New
York, NY, United States; 2Sackler Institute of Graduate Biomedical
Sciences, NYU School of Medicine, New York, NY
Current
SAR monitoring methods offer no capability for a-priori prediction of local
SAR under actual experimental conditions. In this study, we present a model
implementation for the calibration and prediction of local SAR distribution
in parallel transmit MR systems. Calibration based on a modest number of
targeted MR thermometry experiments suffices to enable accurate prediction of
local SAR maps for any pulse shape in situ as long as the temperature change
is within linear regime and heating occurs rapidly. This method is a
potential candidate for ex-vivo local SAR prediction, which would be useful
to evaluate the performance of parallel transmit coil setups on various
tissues with different electrical properties.
In vivo applications will also be explored.