• Bob van den Bergen, Cornelis A T Van den Berg, Lambertus W Bartels, and Jan J W Lagendijk.
• Department of Radiotherapy, University Medical Center Utrecht, PO Box 85500, HP Q.00.118, 3508 GA Utrecht, The Netherlands. B.vandenBergen@UMCUtrecht.nl
• Phys Med Biol. 2007 Sep 7; 52 (17): 5429-41.

AbstractThe high frequency of the radiofrequency (RF) fields used in high field magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) results in electromagnetic field variations that can cause local regions to have a large specific absorption rate (SAR) and/or a low excitation. In this study, we evaluated the use of a B1 shimming technique which can simultaneously improve the B+1 homogeneity and reduce the SAR for whole body imaging at 7 T. Optimizations for four individual anatomies showed a reduction up to 74% of the peak SAR values with respect to a quadrature excitation and a simultaneous improvement of the B+1 homogeneity varying between 39 and 75% for different optimization parameters. The average SAR was reduced with approximately 50% for all optimizations. The optimized phase and amplitude settings from an elliptical phantom model were applied to four realistic human anatomy models to evaluate whether a generic application without prior knowledge of the detailed human anatomy is possible. This resulted in an average improvement of the B+1 homogeneity of 37% and an average reduction of the maximum and average SAR of 50 and 55%, respectively. It can be concluded that this generic method can be used as a simple method to improve the prospects of 7 T body imaging.

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