Implant‐friendly MRI of deep brain stimulation electrodes at 7T

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to present a strategy to calculate the implant‐friendly (IF) excitation modes—which mitigate the RF heating at the contacts of deep brain stimulation (DBS) electrodes—of multichannel RF coils at 7 T.MethodsAn induced RF current on an implantable electrode generates a scattered magnetic field whose left‐handed circularly polarizing component (B1+$$ B{1}^{+} $$) is approximated using a B1+$$ B{1}^{+} $$‐mapping technique and subsequently used as a gauge for the electrode's induced current. Using this approach, the relative induced currents resulting from each channel of a multichannel RF coil on the DBS electrode were calculated. The IF modes of the corresponding multichannel coil were determined by calculating the null space of the relative induced currents. The proposed strategy was tested and validated for unilateral and bilateral commercial DBS electrodes (directional lead; Infinity DBS system, Abbott Laboratories) placed inside a uniform phantom by performing heating and imaging studies on a 7T MRI scanner using a 16‐channel transceive RF coil.ResultsNeither individual IF modes nor shim solutions obtained from IF modes induced significant temperature increase when used for a high‐power turbo spin‐echo sequence. In contrast, shimming with the scanner's toolbox (i.e., based on per‐channel B1+$$ B{1}^{+} $$ fields) resulted in a more than 2°C temperature increase for the same amount of input power.ConclusionA strategy for calculating the IF modes of a multichannel RF coil is presented. This strategy was validated using a 16‐channel RF coil at 7 T for unilateral and bilateral commercial DBS electrodes inside a uniform phantom.