Skin Injury Experienced During MRI Scans: Measurements of Body Coil Electric Field

Sunder S. Rajan¹, Marta Zanchi², Howard Bassen³, Paul Hardy⁴, Joshua Gaug³

The aim of this study is to evaluate the incidence of skin-injuries caused by contact with the magnet-bore and to explore whether the electric-fields are responsible. The FDA database was searched for events. Skin-injuries increased from 5-67 cases /yr between 1998-2009. A significant fraction was from contact with magnet-bore. The E-field at the wall of a stand-alone body-coil was measured using three devices. The E fields in air showed peaks in the vicinity of the capacitors. The field values decreased with distance from the capacitors. The maximum values with 20W CW in air were 3.0, 2.04 at wall and 0.95KV/m at 2 cm.