Local SAR in High Pass Birdcage and TEM Body Coils for Human Body Models at 3T

Desmond Teck Beng Yeo¹, Zhangwei Wang², Wolfgang Loew³, Mika Vogel³, Ileana Hancu¹

The high pass birdcage body coil is commonly used in MRI for homogeneous excitation while the transverse electromagnetic volume coil is increasing used in high-field parallel transmit systems. In this work, the numerically computed normalized local SAR of four human body models, placed at three clinically relevant landmark positions, were compared for a 16-rung high-pass birdcage coil and a TEM body coil at 3T. Results show that while high local SAR may be predicted under certain conditions, any comparative generalizations of local SAR between these coils are untenable unless validated with a diverse set of human models at key landmark positions.