Measurements of MRI Induced Heating

The appeal of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) stems from the fact that it can generate internal images of the human body noninvasively, with high temporal and contrast resolution, and without requiring ionizing radiation. Instead, MRI requires the use of a relatively safe radio frequency (RF) signal, which can however be problematic for patients with implantable medical devices. The RF induced heating on twenty-four titanium rods with different diameters, coatings, and lengths, were placed, within a phantom of gelled saline, inside a 1.5 T, 64 MHz test system for 15 minutes, one-by-one. Thermal simulations were carried out in SEMCAD X. The partially insulated rods experienced the highest increase in temperature out of all the coating configurations. Also, the titanium rods that were closer to the length of a half-wavelength dipole antenna in general experienced a higher increase in temperature. Finally, the thinner rods experienced a higher increase in temperature than the thicker rods.