Mitigating RF heating near medical devices in Magnetic Resonance Imaging

Because of its excellent soft tissue imaging capability, Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) is a desirable diagnostic modality. This modality, however, is presently denied to many patients with implanted medical devices due to adverse interaction of the device with the electromagnetic fields of the MRI system. These adverse interactions include heating near the tissue-electrode interface due to the radiofrequency (RF) field. This work proposes a technique to mitigate the RF heating by a field reduction scheme. While the work concentrates on simplified structures that can be well understood from an analytical approach, the method shown can be extended to the more complex geometry of an implanted lead.