Davide Santoro1, Julia Marie Vogt2,
Wolfgang Renz3, Johanna Gellermann4, Frank Seifert5,
Valeriy Tkachenko4, Jeannette Schulz-Menger4, Thoralf
Niendorf1,4
1Berlin Ultra-High Field
Facility (BUFF), Max Delbrck Center for Molecular Medicine (MDC), Berlin,
Germany; 2Department of Physics, Humboldt University Berlin,
Berlin, Germany; 3Siemens Healthcare, Erlangen, Germany,; 4Experimental
& Clinical Research Center (ECRC), Charit Campus Berlin Buch; 5Physikalisch-Technische
Bundesanstalt (PTB)
The advantage of ultrahigh field MRI holds the promise to enhance, spatial and/or temporal resolution in MRI. Such improvements would benefit an ever growing set of indications for cardiovascular MR. However, intracoronary stents used for treatment of coronary artery disease are currently considered to be contra-indications for CMR at 7.0 T. The presence of a metallic implants in combination with RF wave lengths and RF power deposition used at 7.0 T may induce local heating which might cause myocardial tissue damage, influence coagulation or endothelial function. For all these reasons it is essential to carefully assess RF induced heating in coronary stents commonly used in percutaneous coronary intervention. This work examines RF induced heating of coronary stents in agarose phantoms using electromagnetic field simulations, fiber optic temperature measurements and MR thermometry at 7.0 T.