Abstract #1449

Parallelized Algorithm for the Computation of N-Gram Specific Absorption Rate (SAR) on a Graphics Processor

Lohith Kini¹, Matthias Gebhardt², Khaldoun Makhoul³, Lawrence L. Wald^3,4, Elfar Adalsteinsson^1,4

¹EECS, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, United States; ²Siemens Medical Solutions, Erlangen, Germany; ³MGH, Harvard Medical School, A. A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Charlestown, MA, United States; ⁴Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology, MIT, Cambridge, MA, United States

Specific Absorption Rate (SAR) is a major concern in parallel transmission. Calculating the average N-gram SAR arising at each spatial location is a computationally intractable problem. We propose and demonstrate improvements to a recent algorithm, the fast region-growth algorithm, and exploit its parallelizable computation structure by implementing it on a commercial graphics card. This algorithm is up to 4-7 times faster in runtime regardless of model resolution and number of RF pulse time samples while maintaining accuracy with the fast region-growth algorithm.