Data‐Driven Experimental Evaluation Method for the Safety Assessment of Implants With Respect to RF‐Induced Heating During MRI

Small (mm size) distal electrodes of active medical implants can cause localized radio frequency (RF)‐induced power deposition with extreme spatial gradient (5–6 dB/mm). We propose a method that aims to improve the accuracy of the traditional experimental evaluation, which relies solely on hardware instrumentation. A numerically derived local deposition distribution is used to assist the estimation of power deposition. The method was successfully validated against numerical simulations, considering three different generic implants with a single electrode. The power deposition in the surrounding region of the implant electrodes estimated with the proposed method was validated with less than 1 dB (30%) of uncertainty.