Jul 7, 2009
Measurement, Simulation and Uncertainty Assessment of Implant Heating During MRI
Esra Neufeld, Sven Kühn, Gabor Szekely and Niels Kuster, in Physics in Medicine and Biology, Volume 54, Issue 13, pp. 4151–4169, July 2009
Heating of tissues around implants during MRI can pose severe health risks, and careful evaluation is required for leads to be labeled as MR safe. A recent interlaboratory comparison produced widely (up to more than 5 times) varying results when performing measurements according to current guidelines. To determine the related difficulties and to derive optimized procedures, two different generic lead structures have been investigated in this study by using state-of-the-art temperature and dosimetric probes, as well as simulations for which detailed uncertainty budgets have been determined. The agreement between simulations and measurements is well within the combined uncertainty. The study revealed that the uncertainty can be kept below 17% if appropriate instrumentation and procedures are applied. Optimized experimental assessment techniques can be derived from the findings presented herein.
