Temperature measurements of pacemaker leads in a 1.0T high field open MRI using various MR sequences: initial results
https://doi.org/10.1186/1532-429X-13-S1-P65
© Seitz et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2011
Published: 2 February 2011
Keywords
Introduction
Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is a valuable diagnostic method for many cardiovascular diseases. To date, patients with pacemakers are contra-indicated for cardiac MRI exams due to several effects that can occur during the MRI procedure: a) heating of the lead-tip, and b) less hazardous sensing errors and device malfunctions. Almost all measurements on MRI pacemaker compatibility have been conducted on classic 1.5 or 3T cylindrical whole-body MRI systems. In contrast, this study focused on the use of a high field open MRI (HFO) system due to its advantageous properties of RF fields which are commonly made responsible for the induction of lead heating.
Purpose
Determine the feasibility of MRI examinations of patients with cardiac pacemakers using an open 1.0 T MRT system and realistic cardiac imaging sequences.
Methods
Pacemaker/lead configurations imitating common implantation patterns.
Results
Development of temperature at four different positions (Tip electrode, ring electrode, pacemaker housing, basin/phantom) while exposed to a series for MRI sequences, pacemaker/lead configuration as shown in Fig. 1(a)
Conclusions
In-vitro measurement of an MR compatible and a regular pacemaker lead in geometrically realistic positions in an HFO open MRI system showed no relevant tip heating for both ECG-gated high energy as well as clinically used cardiac MR sequences. Further in-vivo research has to be conducted to clarify the relevance of these findings.
Authors’ Affiliations
Copyright
This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (<url>http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0</url>), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
