Andre Kuehne1, Helmar Waiczies2, Enrico Rudorf1, Frank Seifert1, Bernd Ittermann1
1Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt, Braunschweig & Berlin, Germany; 2Berlin Ultrahigh Field Facility (B.U.F.F.), Max-Delbrueck-Center for Molecular Medicine, Berlin
FDTD simulations are an important tool for any MR coil engineer. The accuracy of the results crucially depends on the sufficient convergence of the simulation. While commercial solvers employ the total system energy content as a convergence measure, we propose to instead monitor the field data at the frequency of interest during the simulation run. This yields a greater insight as to when the desired mode has converged, which for birdcage resonators can be long before the total energy is dissipated. Applying apodization to the time-domain data may significantly speed up the simulation.