Convex Optimized Excitation Control to Reduce RF Heating for DBS Patients at UHF MRI

Patients having deep brain stimulation (DBS) can suffer from radio-frequency (RF) heating around the electrode during the MRI scan. Most of previous solutions were conducted based on the birdcage coil; the methods are inappropriate for ultra-high field (UHF) MRI system over 7 T using multi-channel RF coil. Our study introduced an optimized excitation control method by changing input weights of coil elements through convex optimization. Results demonstrated that proposed method effectively reduces RF heating around the electrode as well as acquires MR images of major brain regions with high resolution simultaneously.