A workflow for predicting temperature increase at the electrical contacts of deep brain stimulation electrodes undergoing MRI

PURPOSE: The purpose of this study is to present a workflow for predicting the radiofrequency (RF) heating around the contacts of a deep brain stimulation (DBS) lead during an MRI scan.

METHODS: The induced RF current on the DBS lead accumulates electric charge on the metallic contacts, which may cause a high local specific absorption rate (SAR), and therefore, heating. The accumulated charge was modeled by imposing a voltage boundary condition on the contacts in a quasi-static electromagnetic (EM) simulation allowing thermal simulations to be performed with the resulting SAR distributions. Estimating SAR and temperature increases from a lead in vivo through EM simulation is not practical given anatomic differences and variations in lead geometry. To overcome this limitation, a new parameter, transimpedance, was defined to characterize a given lead. By combining the transimpedance, which can be measured in a single calibration scan, along with MR-based current measurements of the lead in a unique orientation and anatomy, local heating can be estimated. Heating determined with this approach was compared with results from heating studies of a commercial DBS electrode in a gel phantom with different lead configurations to validate the proposed method.

RESULTS: Using data from a single calibration experiment, the transimpedance of a commercial DBS electrode (directional lead, Infinity DBS system, Abbott Laboratories, Chicago, IL) was determined to be 88 Ω. Heating predictions using the DBS transimpedance and rapidly acquired MR-based current measurements in 26 different lead configurations resulted in a <23% (on average 11.3%) normalized root-mean-square error compared to experimental heating measurements during RF scans.

CONCLUSION: In this study, a workflow consisting of an MR-based current measurement on the DBS lead and simple quasi-static EM/thermal simulations to predict the temperature increase around a DBS electrode undergoing an MRI scan is proposed and validated using a commercial DBS electrode.