Abstract
Patients with implanted medical devices such as deep brain stimulation or spinal cord stimulation are often unable to receive magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). This is because, once the device is within the radio frequency (RF) field of the MRI scanner, electrically conductive leads act as antenna, amplifying the RF energy deposition in the tissue and causing possible excessive tissue heating. Here, we propose a novel concept in lead design in which 40-cm lead wires are coated with a ∼1.2-mm layer of high dielectric constant material (155 < ϵr < 250) embedded in a weakly conductive insulation (σ = 20 S/m). The technique called high-dielectric capacitive bleeding of current (CBLOC) works by forming a distributed capacitance along the lengths of the lead, efficiently dissipating RF energy before it reaches the exposed tip. Measurements during RF exposure at 64 and 123 MHz demonstrated that CBLOC leads generated 20-fold less heating at 1.5 T and 40-fold less heating at 3 T compared to control leads. Numerical simulations of RF exposure at 297 MHz (7 T) predicted a 15-fold reduction in specific absorption rate of RF energy around the tip of CBLOC leads compared to control leads.
Original language | English (US) |
---|---|
Article number | 8598958 |
Pages (from-to) | 1265-1273 |
Number of pages | 9 |
Journal | IEEE Transactions on Microwave Theory and Techniques |
Volume | 67 |
Issue number | 3 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Mar 2019 |
Funding
Manuscript received July 10, 2018; revised October 1, 2018; accepted November 5, 2018. Date of publication January 1, 2019; date of current version March 5, 2019. This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) under Grant R03EB024705. (Giogio Bonmassar and Lawrence L. Wald contributed equally to this work.) (Corresponding author: Laleh Golestanirad.) L. Golestanirad is with the A. A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Massachusetts General Hospital, Department of Radiology, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02129 USA, and also with the Department of Radiology, Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University, Chicago, IL 60611 USA (e-mail: [email protected]). This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) under Grant R03EB024705. The mention of commercial products, their sources, or their use in connection with the material reported herein is not to be construed as either an actual or implied endorsement of such products by the Department of Health and Human Services.
Keywords
- Electrode leads
- MR conditional
- RF heating
- finite-element method
- high field
- high-dielectric material
- magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)
- medical implants
- numerical simulations
- radio frequency (RF) safety
- specific absorption rate (SAR)
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Radiation
- Condensed Matter Physics
- Electrical and Electronic Engineering