A perturbation approach for ultrafast calculation of RF field enhancements near medical implants in MRI

Patients with medical implants often are deprived of magnetic resonance imaging examination because of safety risks. One specific risk is the enhancement of the radiofrequency fields around the medical implant potentially resulting in significant tissue heating and damage. The assessment of this enhancement is a computationally demanding task, with simulations taking hours or days to converge. Conventionally the source of the radiofrequency fields, patient anatomy, and the medical implant are simulated concurrently. To alleviate the computational burden, we reformulate a fast simulation method that views the medical implant as a small perturbation of the simulation domain without the medical implant and calculates the radiofrequency fields associated with this perturbation. Previously, this method required an extensive offline stage where the result is intractable for large simulation domains. Currently, this offline stage is no longer required and the method is completely online. The proposed method results in comparable radiofrequency fields but is orders of magnitude faster compared to standard simulation technique; the finite-difference time-domain, the finite-sums, and the finite element methods. This acceleration could enable patient-specific and potentially online radiofrequency safety assessment.