Adaptation of antenna profiles for control of MR guided hyperthermia (HT) in a hybrid MR-HT system

A combined numerical-experimental iterative procedure, based on the Gauss-Newton algorithm, has been developed for control of magnetic resonance (MR)-guided hyperthermia (HT) applications in a hybrid MR-HT system BSD 2000 3D-MRI. In this MR-HT system, composed of a 3-D HT applicator Sigma-Eye placed inside a tunnel-type MR tomograph Siemens MAGNETOM Symphony (1.5 T), the temperature rise due to the HT radiation can be measured on-line in three dimensions by use of the proton resonance frequency shift (PRFS) method. The basic idea of our iterative procedure is the improvement of the system's characterization by a step-by-step modification of the theoretical HT antenna profiles (electric fields radiated by single antennas). The adaptation of antenna profiles is efficient if the initial estimates are radiation fields calculated from a good a priori electromagnetic model. Throughout the iterative procedure, the calculated antenna fields (FDTD) are step-by-step modified by comparing the calculated and experimental data, the latter obtained using the PRFS method. The procedure has been experimentally tested on homogeneous and inhomogeneous phantoms. It is shown that only few comparison steps are necessary for obtaining a dramatic improvement of the general predictability and quality of the specific absorption rate (SAR) inside the MR-HT hybrid system. (C) 2007 American Association of Physicists in Medicine.