Davide Santoro1, Alexander Mller2, 3, Lukas Winter1, Wolfgang Renz, 14, Andreas Grssl2, Celal zerdem2, Valeriy Tkachenko5, Jeanette Schulz-Menger5, Thoralf Niendorf2, 5
1Berlin Ultra-High Field Facility (BUFF) , Max Delbrck Center for Molecular Medicine (MDC), Berlin, Germany; 2Berlin Ultra-High Field Facility (BUFF), Max Delbrck Center for Molecular Medicine (MDC), Berlin, Germany; 3Department of physics , Humboldt-Universitt zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany; 4Siemens Healthcare, Erlangen, Germany; 5Working Group on Cardiovascular Magnetic Resonance, Experimental and Clinical Research Center (ECRC), Medical University Berlin, Charit Campus Buch, Berlin, Germany
The advantage of ultrahigh field MRI holds the promise to enhance spatial and temporal resolution. Such improvements could be advantageous for several applications in cardiovascular MRI. However, intracoronary stents used for treatment of coronary artery disease are currently considered to be contra-indications for CMR at 7.0 T. The antenna effect induced by a metallic implant in combination with RF wave lengths could increase the RF power deposition at 7.0 T and 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 a copper tube and a coronary stent in agarose phantoms using electromagnetic field simulations, fiber optic temperature measurements and MR thermometry at 7.0 T.